


live from a space station, it's saturday night

by heartofwinterfell



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comedy with a touch of Angst, M/M, Sketch Comedy AU, other characters pop up sporadically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 00:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16482419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofwinterfell/pseuds/heartofwinterfell
Summary: The studio’s close to shutting them down, Keith gets a movie deal he’s not sure he can refuse, Lance keeps trying to tell him good riddance but can’t quite spit out the words, and Hunk and Pidge just want to get their robot lions fighting purple space cats sketch to make it on the air.(a saturday night live au)





	live from a space station, it's saturday night

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place mostly during a week in the midst of season 19 of Sketch Space, a play on Saturday Night Live that’s filmed on a space station in a distant future. I hope you enjoy the madness!

_sunday - season 19_

Keith is a Sunday morning junkie.

He wakes up still on a high, savoring the way he can stretch until all his joints crack pleasantly into place, the six-day crick in his neck miraculously gone, before he simply rolls over and relapses into a blissful slumber. There’s no threat of a blaring alarm, so he can rise at ten in the morning or two in the afternoon, whenever his internal clock wishes to nudge him gently awake.

This morning, he finds a happy medium of 12:07.

It’s still early enough to brew a cup of coffee in the fancy french press Shiro bought him for his last birthday and argued he’d never find time to use. And he’s right six out of seven days. That only makes his black coffee taste all the more beautifully bitter on Sundays, somehow making up for all the stale sludge he dumps down his throat at three in the morning while he’s on twenty-four writing bender.

He’s free of it all until tomorrow morning.

(Sunday mornings and early afternoons are also for lying to himself. Keith will be writing by four, the itch too chronic to stop scratching.)

For now, he’s content to collapse on his couch, a warm mug nestled in his one hand and his phone in the other, the television on low volume and giving him the very beginnings of what he’ll be writing about this week.

The anchor has turned to a gaff made by an Altean royal advisor at a regatta that Keith tries to tune in to when his phone pings.

 **[Shiro]**  
The ratings aren’t bad

Keith opens the preliminary ratings report Alfor forwarded. His lips curl into a frown.

 **[Keith]**  
never as good as they could be

Three dots appear at the bottom of his screen. Then, they vanish. Then, they appear again. Shiro will be sending over a novel, peppered with rephrased snippets of encouragement he’ll be delivering to the full writing staff and cast on Monday. Nothing that they’ve never heard before.

Nothing that will reassure them they’ll be back for Season 20.

Keith closes his messages and zones back into the news. The gaff has been reported - Keith will have to get the details from a junior writer sometime tomorrow - and the anchor appears to be moving on to entertainment. Keith wants to hear them report on the show as badly as he wants to shy away from any criticisms.

“...and we had an all new _Sketch Space_  last night, where the cast poked fun at everything from the Balmeras arguing the upcoming Universe Games should include football with rock balls to using dating apps on a tiny space station. But the real story this morning is recently departed cast member Lotor’s comments on what he calls the show’s “stale” and “embarrassing” humor, in audio released this morning from an upcoming podcast for Flying Purple Pod People…”

The broadcast cuts to a headshot of Lotor, flowing white hair curling effortlessly over his shoulders, sharp eyes piercing through the screen, lips quirking into the knowing smirk he flashed for so many years on camera. Keith knows the photo well. It’s from _Sketch Space_ ’s Season 18 promotional shoot.

“...the life’s truly been sucked out of the show. The jokes are so stale week after week. And just when you think it cannot get more embarrassing, they’re back at again next Saturday night [laughs] I apologize if it comes off like I’m putting down the current cast and writers - galaxies know I understand the struggle of putting on the show - but I hate to see how low it’s sunk. I know I disappointed millions of people when I left, but I simply had no choice. I had to get out of there…”

His smooth baritone cuts out, as does the headshot and the text streaming alongside it. The sunny Sunday afternoon anchors are back, bantering over the comments like it’s all a casual piece of celebrity gossip. And to these anchors, to the countless people who would discuss it all around the coffee machine tomorrow, that’s all it will ever be - fleeting celebrity gossip.

Keith’s heart hammers in his chest, the thumping sounding like a battle drum in his ears, loud enough to drown out the tv’s idle chatter. He’s paralyzed, stock still on the couch. He has trouble telling if his brain is parsing through a thousand thoughts per second or if his train of thought has derailed completely.

It’s a burst of bright pings that set his body back into motion. Still halfway in a daze, he glances down at his screen. There’s a text from Shiro, an email from Allura, two texts from Pidge - but none of the four are responsible for the blow up.

Lance McClain, nine new messages.

His frazzled mind cannot take nine (surely going on ten, eleven, twelve) texts from Lance. He’s on his way to ignoring them and retreating into Shiro’s comforting words from minutes before, when a satellite was not crashing into their orbit, when his screen lights up.

Incoming phone call: Lance McClain.

Against all better judgement, Keith hits accept near instantaneously.

“What a fucking lowlife loser!”

“Lance -” Keith starts weakly. The pounding in his ears is bringing on a headache, fast. Lance’s voice has never helped with that.

“He’s such trash, no! Worse than trash! He’s pure and utter scum. Sewer water! Not that that pampered little daddy’s boy even knows what a sewer is,” Lance sucks in a breath, “But I’m gonna show him, show him exactly where pieces of shit like him belong. When I’m through with him -”

“Lance!”

The rant halts. Keith can hear how heavily he’s breathing. It’s aggravating Keith’s headache. But the passion it stems from is infuriatingly endearing.

That frustrating observation causes Keith’s brain to stall again, as it always does when he lets little Lance compliments slip past the towering walls he built brick by brick to trap any and all Lance-related feelings. He forgets to fill the silence. Lance has a special talent for doing exactly that. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen that dick’s comments.”

“I-”

“No, I will not slander dicks like that. That lying son of a bitch does not deserve to be compared to the beauty that is-”

“Please shut up!” Keith cannot hear Lance wax poetic on human anatomy right now. “Of course I saw them.” On a normal Sunday morning, he’d add that Keith is the person who demanded Lance start watching the local and galactic weekend news or else he’d never come within fifty feet of the Report desk.

It’s not a normal Sunday morning.

“And?”

“And what, Lance?” Keith is still clutching his cooling coffee. He’ll have to put it down if he wants to kneed at his pulsing temple or shove a frustrated hand through his bed head. But his body and mind feel entirely out of whack. An action as simple as leaning over to place a neglected mug on his coffee table does not compute.

He grips the mug tight enough that it should shatter instead.

Because Lance is about to ask the question he dreads.

“So what are we going to do about it?”

Keith slams his mug on the coffee table and uses his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We’re not going to do anything.”

“But-”

It’s strange, the sudden desire for Lance to be in front of him, standing incensed in Keith’s apartment. Keith wants to be able to deliver his next words directly in his face, finger pointed to his chest, secretly delighting in the brief flash of pure terror that always alights Lance’s face. “You’re going to make no public statements, you’re not going to make any shady social media posts, you’re not going to call Allura. You’re going to sit on your couch and watch the news, so maybe we can write some semblance of a Raucous Report tomorrow.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Keith is all at once glad Lance is not in front of him, for the obvious reason that he would never want Lance McClain within two hundred feet of his apartment and for the annoyingly guilty reason that Keith never actually enjoys seeing Lance disappointed.

Keith knows the feeling of wanting to shred Lotor to ribbons in the news and passive aggressively parade their success in photos for all to see and call Allura so she could do those things for him. He knows the desperate yearning better than Lance may know.

But they have to stay professional, if only to buy the show a little time.

After a minute of silence, Keith checks his screen to see if Lance hung up. “Wow, I didn’t know you could stay quiet for a whole 60 ticks.”

Keith expects one of Lance’s indignant scoffs. Instead, he gets, “I was just thinking about how we could get Coran to play that Altean advisor who accidentally pushed the Italian universe ambassador off a boat.”

And just like that, the pounding in his head begins to subside, a miniscule piece of the tension lifted from his shoulders. After the longest five minutes of his life, Keith manages a small smile. “Is that what happened at the regatta?”

“Oh, does the great Keith Kogane not actually pay attention to the morning news?” Lance slips effortlessly back into jabbing, teasing, rivaling, “I guess we finally uncovered the mystery of why our Monday write-ups are always so shitty.”

“Yeah, my co-anchor can’t write a joke,” Keith deadpans.

The indignant scoff comes out. “Well my co-anchor can’t take a joke!”

“Watch the news, Lance,” Keith says before hanging up the call, before Lance can tell he’s fighting down a laugh. A phantom smile lingers on his face.

But the comedown hits moments later. A news alert pops up on his lock screen, a Galaxy Report article with the teaser “Lotor Zarkon slams _Sketch Space_ \- is the show as stale as he suggests?”

Keith snatches up his cooled coffee and makes for the kitchen, phone clutched in the other hand. He’ll have to call Shiro. And Pidge will call soon enough. Allura may, too and Keith is not sure that’s a call he’s emotionally equipped to take.

He pours the wasted coffee down the drain, leaving it join the pitiful remains of his Sunday.

 

...

 

_sunday - season 13_

Keith wakes up September 30th thinking he should be dead.

His heart had to have stopped last night - no, not last night, very early this morning - how could it have taken the stress, the anxiety, the nerves, the terror, the joy? When he crash landed into his bed at the cursed hour of four in the morning, he descended into a blissful state of unconscious, too content to never rise again.

He is awake now, staring at his water-stained ceiling, and his cheeks feel sticky. He runs one hand down the side of his face - it’s wet. He’s crying. But when he trails his fingertips down a fraction further, he skims the corner of an ear-splitting grin, his.

He distantly recalls once thinking happy tears did not exist. People cried when they’re walked up to the doorstep of an old brownstone and walked out a month later or people cried when a kid the size of a giant pushes them to the pavement or people cried when they punch a wall and look down at the hand, bloody and mangled, and wonder who would be there to take them to the hospital. No one cried from overwhelming happiness. That sounded like the stuff of a half-remembered dream.

Only the dream of last night does not come back half-remember, it roars to life in living-color. The red of the lipstick painted on him for the cold open and the orange guts of the pumpkin exploded at the halfway mark and yellow heat of the stage lights and that green feeling of being brand new and the blue of a costar’s eyes and all the ultraviolet rays he believed he could see and touch and feel in every overwhelming moment of the night.

He remembers the host yelling good night and being gathered up in Shiro’s arms, whispering thank you’s over and over until the words lost all coherence and meaning. And of all the thoughts that ran through his head last night, the one he had in that moment still rings clear and sweet as a bell now.

This is what he’ll want forever.

He’ll never ask for anything else.

 

...

 

_monday_

Keith has been ignoring a metric ton of emails all day, but only one of those emails rests heavily on his frontal cortex, persistently gnawing on his brain tissue.

(It’s a terrible mental image and an even more terrible use of personification, but it’s a Monday and his writing does not have to be sharp until at least early Thursday morning.)

 **From:** J. Iverson  
**CC:** Adam Wilder  
**Subject:** Meeting RE. _The Blade of Marmora_ script

Every time he decides he’s done staring at the subject line, closes completely out of his email and resolves himself to write, temptation brings him back. And he can draft a hundred different replies, use and delete and reuse a thousand different words, but it boils down to two mutually exclusive answers: yes, take the meeting or no, try again years down the line.

Saturday afternoon, Keith would have been ready to say yes and scream it from the space station roof, out into the void of space. Now, creeping into Monday evening, Keith has no answer, though he wants nothing more than to scream into a void.

He’s forced to close his email again when Lance strolls into his office and collapses onto Keith’s couch face first. Lance groans, Keith grimaces. “Pretty sure there’s a couch in your office. Even more sure you complained for months to get it put in there.”

Lance says something that gets smothered in the couch cushion. Keith rolls his eyes and turns back to his computer screen. The only window left standing is a word document full of half-written jokes, most unpitchable. He narrows in on one about the Space Summit’s upcoming vote on whether or not resort planets without formal governments get full planetary status. The punchline will be undoubtedly be something like “as long as it doesn’t mess with our vacations.”

Keith can hear the distant echoes of canned laughter. It sounds stale.

Lance groans again, somehow vocalizing Keith’s internal monologue. He must have taken his head out of the pillows because he next words ring clear, “What’s the worst that could really happen if we skip Monday pitch?”

“No,” Keith answers while deleting the painful punchline.

“As always, that was a joke.”

“It’s almost like you make it every week and it’s gotten old.”

“Well, I got so many, I can afford a few growing old. You on the other hand…” Lance must have gotten up without a sound because his voice is suddenly right in Keith’s ear. Keith swivels his chair away, but Lance stays hovering over his shoulder, eyes intent on the word doc. “I really hope the Summit vote doesn’t impact my next vacation though. Don’t want an uprising of masseuses and lifeguards keeping me from working on my perfect tan.”

Keith is loath to admit there could be a joke somewhere in that reply, but he’s just petulant enough to scroll up to the top of the doc instead of jotting down a note. “You don’t even visit resort planets, you just go to that same beach, Varadero…”

Apparently Keith has made a deadly mistake because Lance’s smile has grown three sizes as his hand flies to his heart. “Aw Keith, what other little personal things do you remember about me?”

What had been an absent-minded comment, a way to distract from Keith’s poor Monday morning writing, has twisted into a weapon for ribbing at Keith’s expense. Keith knows Lance spends vacations in Cuba because he’s subjected to the onslaught of pictures on social media and because he hears the steady stream of rambling about the trips when he gets back and because Keith knows for as much as Lance loves being under the spotlight of Sketch Space, he loves being under the summer sun alongside his family more. And that’s a hard fact everyone knows about Lance. If Keith had tucked the fact away some time ago and held on to it, it was because of nothing more than excessive exposure.

Keith could say all of that or he could keep his thoughts where they belonged, in his own mind or on the page. He wills the heat in his face away and keeps his eyes on the screen. “Do you have anything to contribute to this pitch meeting or will it just be me?” Keith does not tack on the as usual. He prefers to think of it as implied.

Lance huffs, because he has no pages or because Keith did not rise to his last bait is unknown. “I’ll have you know -”

“Hey guys, you gotta see this.” Hunk reaches the end of his sentence at the same time he has the remote to Keith’s TV in his hand. The screen flashes to life and Hunk quickly flips to a channel Keith vaguely recognizes as one mostly full of trashy TMZ offshoots.

One of the TMZ offshoots is currently airing, with an impeccably dressed Altean host standing in front of a flat screen. The volume is low - Keith can barely make out what the woman is saying. It’s the video on the flat screen that has his blood quickly reaching a boil.

Lotor and his father, billionaire Zarkon, stand side by side smiling to offscreen camera flashes. They’re standing next to a large banner with the bolded words “Zarkon Media Network” and underneath, the catchier acronym “ZMN.”

“ZMN, the newest branch of Zarkon Universal, the multi-trillion dollar company, will be launching in the coming weeks. It’s flagship program? A sketch comedy show hosted by Zarkon’s son, Lotor. This announcement comes just a day after Lotor’s comments that _Sketch Space_ , where he spent six seasons, had grown ‘stale’ and ‘embarrassing.’ So far, no one from the current cast of _Sketch Space_ has answered to the jabs, but with this announcement, it’s hard to see how the team at _Sketch Space_ can ignore it. Because when will Lotor’s new show be airing?” The host pauses for dramatic effect. “You guessed it, Saturday night.”

The show does a montage of various sketches from _Sketch Space_ featuring Lotor, intercut with videos and photos of him out of the crazy costumes and makeup, as though anyone needed to be reminded of his good looks and his charmed life. After a lingering shot of Lotor standing proud beside the brand new ZMN logo, the show fades into a commercial. Keith’s office fills with a peppy jingle, so ill-suited for the mood it’s laughable.

Not one of the comedy writers in the room can muster a joke.

What Hunk does is mute the TV. Lance sinks into the couch, hands balled into tight fists. Keith stays in his chair, his fingers gripped so tightly around the armrests he expects a crack, see if the plastic or his bones give first.

Hunk speaks up first, “What happens now?”

“All cast and crew meeting tonight.” Shiro materializes in the doorway, slotting himself seamlessly into the non-conversation. His face holds the passive calm that has reassured Keith for so much of his adult life. But underneath the surface, and only from constantly reading Shiro as he would a treasured book, Keith can see the stress taking a toll, the darkening rings around his eyes a foreboding sign.

“And we’re going to talk about this?” Lance points at the TV, but the rest of his body stays rigid. And Keith has to admit that he has read Lance from cover to cover too, enough to know that something is terribly wrong when he’s not emphatically waving every limb to make his point.

Shiro shakes his head once before answering, “Not this exactly.”

“So just a regular ole morale boosting session. Cool.” Lance’s words are clipped, colored with hardly-hidden contempt. Suddenly, Keith starts seeing the exchange as though played out on a drama, no one saying what they mean, everyone speaking in emotional riddles Keith has no desire to unpack. He wants to swipe the remote from Hunk and change the channel.

Instead he has to watch Shiro sigh with barely concealed exasperation, a sigh so often reserved for Lance that Keith has wondered if the sound follows Lance into his dreams. “Lance -”

Hunk swoops in at that moment, striding for the door. “Are we still pitching to Alfor in the meantime? Remember that robot lions sketch Pidge and I pitched last week? I think we’re, like, this close to cracking it.”

At the mention of lion robots, Shiro groans and the tension on his side of the room evaporates. “I’m obligated to say yes, you still have to pitch for Alfor.”

“The robot lions will rise!” Hunk races out the door, the last thing Keith can hear echoing down the hall, “Hey Pidge, get the storyboards!”

Shiro lingers in the doorway, throwing a look over to Lance. He’s staring at the floor, where his foot taps a hundred beats per minute. Shiro moves his gaze to Keith. He gently raises an eyebrow, Shiro speak for fix it. When Keith opens his mouth to voice not my problem, Shiro disappears.

As if sensing the barrier in the door has cleared, Lance shoots up. The raw energy radiating off him scares Keith. And as much as Keith believes it’s not his problem, he wants to find a way to cap the energy, funnel it down a safer path, anything that will prevent an explosion at the all staff meeting.

So when Lance rockets for the door, Keith stands abruptly. The sudden movement is enough to halt Lance.

“We still have to pitch to Alfor, too,” Keith reminds him.

“Got it,” Lance answers stiffly, taking another step out the door.

“Did you talk to Coran about that Altean advisor interview bit?”

“It’ll be ready.” Without any more, Lance stalks out the door. Keith prays to all the gods in the universe that Lance is just going back to stew in his office, mumble obscenities into the pillows of his own couch. It will be far from the first time the office has seen that meltdown. But everything from the last ten minutes tell Keith this is different. That the natural order of the office has shifted and there may not be a way to force it back into place.

Keith slowly sits back down and turns back to his computer. An email alert has popped up in the bottom right corner. Adam has replied to Iverson’s email. Keith numbly clicks on the alert and he’s back where this day began, with an message he’s unsure how to ignore.

So instead of ignoring it, Keith’s fingers begin flying across the keys. Within a minute, he sends off a reply.

He’s free to meet Wednesday morning about the script.

Terror and guilt seize at him like twin beasts and he furiously clicks into his Sent folder to read back what he wrote, what he sent into the universe on a numb but emotional whim.

He only reaches the salutation when his phone alarm goes off. He has to meet with Alfor to pitch a rough outline of the Report.

Going on autopilot, he shuts his laptop and stands. He makes for the door when he notices his TV remains on. The Altean host is back, presumably talking about a popstar whose mugshot is displayed on the screen behind her. Keith needs it to end.

Except Hunk made off with his remote.

Keith comes to that conclusion after tearing through every cushion on his couch. When he turns back towards the door, Lance waits there, eyebrows raised but jaw tense.

“Are we doing this or are you too busy building a pillowfort?” The joke does not reach Lance’s eyes. That makes it all the more ironic that Keith laughs, louder and longer than the joke deserves. The laugh catches Lance off guard - he gapes. It takes the anger out of his face, but just for a moment. He throws up a wall as Keith’s laughter peters out.

These are not the co-anchors Sketch Space audiences signed up for. They’re truly all out of order.

What else would explain it, that in the most dire of circumstances, Lance grows sullen and brooding and Keith wants any reason to laugh?

 

...

 

_monday - season 17_

Keith has no power to fire Lance McClain.

He also does not have the power to fire whoever forgot to put that important stipulation in his contract.

6:17 PM on a Monday night and Keith is preparing to use his pitch meeting with Alfor to demand renewed contract negotiations.

Maybe, just maybe, running late for the first pitch of the season would have been easier to forgive and forget if Keith had not spent the entire summer learning exactly how his tenure with Lance as co-anchor would operate. Keith sent him countless detailed emails about how he and Allura had written, polished, and executed their Raucous Reports last season. Lance responded with such hits as “cool” or “yeah sure sounds good” or towards the end “The person you’re trying to reach is currently not available because he’s enjoying his vacation unlike half-alien Texan mullets without lives. Please leave your name and number and credit card information and he’ll consider setting up a resort reservation on your behalf.”

It took three of that exact same reply for Keith to realize Lance must of set it up as an automatic response to any and all emails Keith sent his way.

But even that would not have been enough for Keith to want Lance dead and buried. No, it was the incessant three in the morning texts come August that covered a range of random and increasingly perplexing topics that Lance wanted to shoehorn into the Report. They should talk more about how the United Kingdom _still_ has a monarchy. They should take more shots at the Galra because screw Lotor and who cares if his father is a major producer of the show. They should have Mothman be a recurring correspondent!

(Keith may have screenshotted the last one.)

And after all the late night ping, ping, pings Keith had to endure, Lance does not bother to show up on time for their pitch.

There’s a deservedly smug little part of Keith’s brain chanting over and over _I knew it and I warned you all, but none of you wanted to hear it_. The tiny voice starts doing high nasally mocking voices of Shiro’s encouraging _you two will make a great team_ , I know it and Allura’s smooth British _you’ll have so much fun together!_

But Keith knew. Lance McClain’s not ready for the big leagues and he never will be.

The bane of his existence chooses that moment to come barreling down the hall, a Space Fuel energy drink in one hand and a notebook stuffed with scrap pages in the other. He skids to a stop in front of Keith’s chair, dangerously teetering to one side. Keith wonders if an exasperated sigh in his direction would be enough to topple him over.

Lance takes a gulp of the energy drink and crushes the can in his fist before he’s done swallowing. Keith wrinkles his nose, but the disgust doesn’t seem to faze Lance at all. He looks down at Keith and has the audacity to raise an eyebrow. “Are we doing this or what, mullet brains?”

Keith opens his mouth, but he’s so livid not a single sound comes out. The anger has stalled him completely.

Lance shrugs his shoulders once and walks straight into Alfor’s office without another glance. Keith remains motionless in his chair, mouth still slightly agape.

A lone thought drifts through his mind: _I cannot work like this._

All of a sudden, Keith launches out of his chair, body back in motion. He stalks down the hall, away from the office, fully intent on find Shiro and announcing they’re going to be out the only viable co-anchor if Lance is not gone immediately. In a war waged between Keith and Lance, who is Shiro going to side with? Who is the cast going to side with? The crew? The answer is so obvious that Keith bets even Alfor would…

Keith screeches to a halt, only halfway to Shiro’s office.

He’s supposed to be in a meeting with Alfor.

Currently Lance is in that meeting.

That does not look great for Keith.

He whirls around and races back toward the showrunner’s office, trying not to think that he looks an awful lot like the Lance of two minutes ago. He bursts through Alfor’s door, startling Lance into stopping mid-dramatic hand motion.

Poised as always, Alfor does not miss a beat. “Ah, Keith! Lance told me you were finishing a news article and would be here shortly. And here you are!”

Keith throws a look to Lance. He pointedly looks away. Realizing Alfor is looking to him for a response, Keith clears his throat. “Uh, yeah. That...space junkyard overflow piece. There’s definitely something there.”

“Excellent!” Alfor claps his hands together. Keith takes that as a cue to slowly sink down into the chair beside Lance’s. He still refuses to look Keith’s way even as Keith tries to burn a hole into the side of his skull.

They both snap to attention when Alfor speaks again. “Now Lance here was just presenting me the full Report breakdown. He has even wisely included expected run times per segment. I believe even my dear daughter would be impressed.” Alfor winks at Lance. Keith watches a flush spread like wildfire across Lance’s face. His eyes then dart to the paper in Alfor’s hand. His own hand itches to reach out and grab it.

“Why don’t you continue from where you left off Lance and then we’ll let Keith fill us in on the news we missed?”

For the first time, Lance’s eyes dart to Keith, as if he needs permission now. All Keith can do is dumbly stare back at him and wonder what Twilight Zone he crash landed into when he raced through that door.

The rest of the meeting passes in a blur of Alfor’s excitement, Keith’s half-hearted joke pitches, and a body snatcher in Lance’s form detailing rehaul structure ideas to make the Report snappier, pitching new segments that go beyond kooky correspondents, and being a generally organized and succinct person.

Keith leaves the meeting with Alfor’s pride and congratulations that feel ill-deserved. Sure, he came as prepared as he always had been in meetings last season with Alfor and Allura. But Lance-bot swooped in and raised the bar. For a brief second, Keith worries he’ll never be tall enough to reach it.

But worry gives way to seething anger as Keith watches Lance start down the hall back towards his office without even a passing look Keith’s way. Keith clenches his jaw, but says nothing as he follows Lance, putting a lid on the high intensity rage simmering beneath his surface until he slams Lance’s office door shut.

“What the fuck.”

Lance dares to look startled, throwing his hands up in a weak defense. “Did that not go well?’

Keith clenches his fists, not trusting his hands not to move of their volition and find home around Lance’s throat. “You spend all summer ignoring me, wasting time -”

“- wasting time!? It’s called vacation, Keith -”

“- and then you come back don’t even meet with me to write -”

“- because your closed door is _so_ inviting -”

“- and then just do all the work yourself? So you could what? Prove to Alfor you’re the best? No one cares about that but you, Lance!”

Keith hadn’t wanted the day to end like this, even as it had felt as inevitable as a star imploding. Them, Lance and Keith, they were always a pair too close to combustion and all to willing to blow. This square off feels as cathartic as it does exhausting. Keith had wanted it to turn out differently, but he wanted to be proven right too.

And by the furious look in Lance’s eyes but the heaving movement of his chest, Lance had wanted the same.

“Like you weren’t planning on telling Shiro or Alfor as soon you could that I wasn’t good enough for this,” Lance says, jabbing a finger towards Keith’s chest.

“What are you even talking about? The only one who had been sabotaging you all summer was _you_.” The half-lie tastes more sour in Keith’s mouth than he thought it would. Better to deflect, better to focus on what Lance had done wrong, better to swallow down the feelings he did not want spilling off his tongue.

And there’s a conflicting look on Lance’s face, an emotion Keith cannot pin down. When his voice comes out softer, lower in volume, Keith is caught off guard. “So this could be something you -”

The door flies open. Keith falters back and Lance jumps a solid foot in the air. Pidge stands in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes burning underneath her glasses. “Is the screaming match done yet? Because you know some people work in this building.”

“Yeah, but I thought gremlins only get going after dark,” Lance says, face slipping so easily into a grin that Keith gets emotional whiplash. Keith breaks out in a grin of his own though when Pidge picks up an empty bottle from Lance’s floor and chucks it at him, causing Lance to screech. “I stand corrected - gremlins are out at all hours of the day.”

Pidge glowers. “Just keep the volume down on the lover’s quarrel.”

She’s thoughtful enough - or disgruntled enough - to slam the door behind her.

A ghost of a smile remains on Lance’s face and he collapses into his desk chair. Keith feels the fight left him too, the pent up anger leaked out into the hall when the door opened. They’re only left with the exhaustion.

But the conversation does not feel over, hanging like a loose thread between them. Only Keith has never been good at filling the silence, looking to Lance even when he did not want to because he always had a reservoir of meaningless words to pull from. Lance says nothing though. He looks lost somewhere, in thoughts he’ll never voice to Keith. A first, a day Keith never thought would come. He finds it’s not as worthy of celebration as he thought it’d be.

Without anything to say, but too stubborn to leave, Keith drifts towards Lance’s printer. There’s a copy of the paper Lance had given Alfor, the full breakdown of this week’s Report.

Keith glances at it. He picks it up. He skims. He reads. He looks up.

“This is really good.” Lance glances over at him, stolen away from his reveries. He wrinkles his nose in confusion, so Keith waves the paper. “It’s really good.”

Lance’s eyes widen in surprise before his face goes carefully blank. “Yeah, I know.” Lance folds his arm and lounges back in his chair. “Wish you had thought of it, mullet?”

Keith rolls his eyes, but bites his tongue before he can rise to Lance’s bait. He says instead, “Let’s actually meet tomorrow...or tonight, I’m always here late.”

“I’ve noticed, you vampire,” Lance snaps back, but then he gives a half-shrug. “I can do later tonight.”

Keith nods once, “Good.”

“Cool.”

There’s a long awkward beat of Keith staring at Lance and Lance staring back at him and neither making a single move. But Keith senses something has resolved, the loose thread tied up as well as could be expected by two boys with clumsy hands and a pattern of bad cooperation.

Keith moves for the door. Lance’s voice stops him.

“I really want this to work,” Lance blurts out, only it’s quiet, spoken like a confession. “I want to do a good job.”

Perhaps the thought burst out by accident, past a filter Keith never believed Lance had, but they both heard it. Keith turns his head slightly and does his best to smile reassuringly. He’s sure it comes off more like a grimace. Lance smiles back anyway and it somehow reassures Keith in return.

Keith makes his exit with a thought he will not let burst out, but one he knows is important.

_I could maybe work like this._

 

...

 

_tuesday_

Costume and wardrobe has been a dream since being promoted to Raucous Report anchor.

He used to have to fit in three or four fittings a week, wig fittings if necessary, and he’d spend the better part of an hour shoved into back laced leather corsets or candy striper suits or full metal jackets. He left each and every fitting winded and exhausted and ready to burrow into his couch back in his apartment instead of spending another second writing.

Now, he has one fitting a week, if that, and it’s always a cool colored suit and an inoffensive tie. And no matter how many times Lance bothers wardrobe about it and not matter how many times they cave and try to humor him, Keith will never sign off on pastels or themed holiday looks. He likes his charcoal gray suit and his maroon tie and he’ll never ask for more.

That’s what makes dressing for a late night show interview so aggravating.

The walk from the _Sketch Space_ offices to the _After Hours with Allura_ studio takes three minutes, easy. Filming a guest segment takes forty minutes, maximum. That’s what Shiro promised him when he lovingly guilt-tripped Keith into taking the Tuesday night guest slot typically reserved for a Sketch Space cast member.

It’ll be the first interview any of them have given since Lotor’s comments and show announcement.

Certain cast members named Lance McClain were not thrilled when they heard the news: “Him? Mr. Hot Head? He’s going to end up insulting Lotor’s whole family and an uninvolved planet if you put him on TV!”

Lance and Keith find new things to agree on with every passing day.

And spending over an hour in wardrobe, followed by hair and makeup, has done nothing to quell his doubts. It’s just given him sixty minutes to stew in his impatience, that soon evolves into brooding in anger, which too often reaches a head and turns into snapping in frustration. He’s already gritted his teeth at a kindly hair stylist who asked him when’s the last time he cut his hair. Though he’d like to blame that on Lance-like laughter echoing in the back of his head.

He has to keep reminding himself everything will be fine. That’s the Shiro thing to do.

Make-up finally sets him free and Keith drifts into the green room. There’s a long table of fancy finger foods, no doubt hand-picked by Allura herself, but Keith has no stomach to swallow down anything.

He should not be the first responder here, not when he does a better job fanning the flames than smothering them. And even as it fills him with a vindictive kind of glee, knowing Lotor will be seething as he watches Keith and Allura share thinly veiled barbs at his expense, Keith has the sinking feeling he’ll only feel empty come midnight tonight, minutes after the show airs.

Worse, he’ll not be able to show any of that exhaustion because there’s a long running tradition of watching _After Hours_ as a group whenever a cast member pops up. Everyone will bombard his office tonight, Hunk with homemade snacks and Pidge with her camera to capture Keith cringing at himself and Lance with his long limbs taking up every cushion on the couch.

Thinking of them now has Keith reaching for his phone, if only to give him a measly distraction from his spiralling mind. Sure enough, he has good luck messages from Hunk, Pidge, Coran, Shay, and and even Nyma. And perhaps unsurprisingly, if Keith dwells on it a little too long, he has a long stream of messages from Lance.

 **[Lance]**  
good luck mullet  
make us all proud  
still think it should be me but  
c’est la vie  
or w/e the latin is  
stick it to him where it hurts  
(like his totally fake ass accent)

Keith must look like an idiot, laughing to an empty room. He can’t help it, not when his memory starts playing back all the times Lotor would address a room with exaggerated formality and Keith would spy Lance rolling his eyes in the background, at times making ridiculous expressions with his mouth to silently mimic his accent. Keith remembers being annoyed at Lance for never taking Lotor seriously. Now he’s beginning to wonder if Lance saw through Lotor when no one else did.

That’s nothing he’ll ever talk about over text. It’s nothing he’ll ever want to talk about, full stop.

 **[Keith]**  
C’est la vie is French, Lance.

He thinks about sending an emoji, as ridiculous as he finds them, to let Lance know, in the minisculest of ways, he appreciates the messages. That they’ve made him feel lighter, given him a cooler head. His finger is still hovering over the most generic of smiles when Allura blows into the room.

“Keith!”

Keith drops his phone his lap and then it tumbles to the floor when he stands up abruptly. He narrowly avoids smashing it under his shoe when Allura rushes over for a hug. Keith hopes his arms do not feel as rigid to Allura as they do to Keith.

“I’ve missed you.”

“Allura, we saw each other Saturday night...” Keith trails off as Allura squeezes him impossibly tighter. And Keith gets it, so he squeezes back a little too, as if they both can wring out all the bad feelings he left behind.

Allura at last pulls away, but he keeps him just an arms length away, looking up at him with her perfect mix of pride and resolve. “Let’s go kick his ass.”

Stage management calls places moments later and Allura breezes out, never one to have people come track her down. Keith’s heart skips because he really does miss her, misses having her by his side every Saturday, volleying the jokes back and forth between each other and soaking in the laughter together. And even though he’d never trade in what he has with Lance now, he knows a piece of him will always be nostalgic for his first year at the Report desk, knowing he’d have Allura there to catch him when he fumbled.

She’ll catch him today too, if his boiling anger at Lotor starts edging towards controversial. That’s enough reassurance to get him out of the green room and into the wings, happy to watch Allura film her opening monologue and giggle along with the band.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, distracting him. He’ll have to turn it off before he gets onstage. As he does, he catches sight of the screen: another message from Lance. Too tempted, Keith opens it.

 **[Lance]**  
I’m keith  
i have no life so i spend all my time learning dead languages

Keith rolls his eyes, but keeps the message string pulled up, waits as Lance types.

 **[Lance]**  
seriously good luck  
i know it can be hard to respond to this stuff

The band is revving up onstage to accompany his entrance, so Keith only has time to switch off his phone completely and shove it back in his pocket. It’s all for the best, Keith tells himself and he prepares to walk out. What could he have responded to that, outside of _do you know more than I ever thought you did? Do you also read me like you’d read your favorite book, over and over again until you know all my twists and turns by heart?_

Keith must looking like a grimacing disaster when he enters, but the studio audience has signage telling them to clap anyway. Allura moves to meet him, hugging him for a second time. She guides him to the guest couch and he tries to sit like a person who wants to be under the harsh studio lights answering questions that make his insides squirm.

“Welcome - Keith Kogane everyone!”

Keith smiles out at the audience, tight-lipped. He turns back to Allura and tries to find solace in her shining confidence. “Thanks for having me back.”

“Of course!” Allura claps her hands together, “Now, before we get to that topic, I thought we could take a trip down memory lane first.”

Allura flips a card on her desk: it’s a photo of an early episode during Season 16, taken at the Report desk. It had to be right as they delivered the sign off - Keith can see the ecstasy of making it through another episode unscathed written across his face. Keith’s hair was the same length then as it is now and Allura never appears to age, yet they both look younger somehow.

“Keith and I used to run the infamous Raucous Report together.”

Keith always loved the way Allura said Raucous Report in her posh accent, giving the sketch an ironic sophistication that made Keith grin. “We did.”

“And is it quite different now, since I’ve been gone?” Allura’s leading him somewhere, on a road that will undoubtedly lead directly to Lance, and Keith is forced to follow.

“Yes, I host alone,” Keith deadpans and the audience does not need to be told to laugh.

Keith had to learn long ago that audiences will always love hearing Keith talk about Lance and vice versa. It used to irritate Keith, in the early days, when he and Lance still stood on shaky ground and the Report always seemed to stand moment by moment on the edge of disaster. He could only take so many think pieces about why audience loved his and Lance’s dynamic so much when behind the scenes, he had to deal with the dark and unpleasant side of their “fun-loving rivalry.”

He cannot pinpoint exactly when it stopped being irritating and started being a little fun, a fount of opportunity to rib Lance on live television. And it always snuck up on him, how nice of a reminder it is that people like seeing him and Lance as partners in crime.

“Lance is just a constant correspondent, then?” Allura teases.

“More like a guy who keeps slipping past security.” That’ll ruffle Lance’s feathers later tonight, but it keeps Keith smiling.

Allura laughs along with the audience before shaking her head, “Oh, but how is our dear friend, Lance?”

“Absolutely desperate to be here,” Keith says, motioning to a spot next to him on the couch. Keith could go on, but a quick recollection of Lance’s messages makes him pause. “Honestly though, Lance has been great. He had...well, he obviously had huge shoes to fill, following you but...he never backs down from a challenge, so…”

Keith rubs the back of his neck and is quietly thankful there are no “aw” cues for the audience. Pidge would never let that go.

“Ah, and speaking of never backing down from a challenge…” Allura flips over another photo card. From the flash of black and white spots, Keith knows instantly where this is going. He cannot bite back the groan. “Yes! It’s time to finally talk about the origins of _Kaltenecker’s Adventures in Space_. I believe Lance’s direct quote was it went…”

“...upside down, topside up, crazy shit bananas.”

 

...

 

_tuesday - season 15_

Keith’s wig is making him break out in hives, Lance has clearly never directed a camera crew in his life, and there’s a live Earth cow in the studio.

None of them are making it out alive.

“Isn’t this just too fun?”

Keith whirls around at the unmistakable accent. “Allura? He roped you into this, too?” She’s already dressed, though her flowing white hair has stayed intact, only twisted in three intricately braided buns - two on the side and one resting atop her head. Her floor-length jet black sheath looks vaguely Grecian, but Allura’s entire ensemble has Keith thinking Lance gave the wardrobe team a more space-related point of reference to go off of.

Not that Allura would ever guess the role she’s stepped into. She’s taking in the disaster - production assistants rushing to finish the outlandish mountain planet set, Lance double-fisting energy drinks, make-up techs slathering toxic green goo on Hunk’s face, the live cow - with wide-eye wonderment. She lets out a happy sigh. “Actually, I was quite honored Lance asked me. I never get to be in sketches anymore.”

He hopes Shiro will be proud he refrains from rolling his eyes at the showrunner’s daughter. “Lemme guess, you’re playing his love interest.”

Allura glances at the top of her script. “It appears I’m the ‘princess in distress.’”

“Of course you are.” Leave it to loverboy Lance to write an entire digital short around Allura falling in love him while he acquires a bovine best friend. Keith hates that the thought makes him want to laugh, because even that feels like Lance winning. Winning at what, only Lance knows and it’s been that way since the start of the season.

If Keith is in the cold open one week, Lance pitches a cold open himself the week after. Keith comes up with a Raucous Report correspondent and suddenly Lance comes up with three. There were times when it had nothing to do with a character either one of them was playing. Just last week, Keith tentatively asked Hunk if he could write a character for him and not a few hours later, Lance was drafting a sketch with major parts for both Hunk and Pidge. It seems whenever Keith wants a joke to go left, Lance will be there to say it should go right.

So Allura will have to forgive him for not wanting to revel in excitement.

If only Allura were one to let things go. “Oh come now, Keith! Where is your sense of adventure?”

Lost somewhere with his dignity, both taking to the hills when Keith donned the blonde bowl cut wig and green velvet lederhosen.

“Now, are you supposed to be Lan, the frustratingly handsome strudel maker?”

Keith’s neck snaps up so fast, he hears a crack. “The what?”

Allura moves to show him the character breakdown in her script, when Lance materializes at her elbow. “Okay, no time to stand around chit-chatting, places please!” He hooks his arm through hers and yanks her in the direction of the soundstage. Keith stares after them, somehow more bewildered and frustrated than he was thirty second ago, back when he believed there had to be a terminal velocity for how crazy Lance could make him.

Lance looks truly ridiculous, flapping his arms around in his white sheet karate kid ensemble, positioning Allura for the opening shot of the short. The star of the show - Kaltenecker the cow - goggles blankly at a wall while Lance tries to draw its focus up. Keith hopes someone’s getting the exchange on video, so he goes to find the person he knows will forever have their camera pointed at dumb Lance shenanigans.

Pidge is standing by a cameraman, cloaked in the shadow of the equipment. Her phone is trained on Lance and it never leaves him even as Keith approaches. “Please tell me this is actually supposed to be a _Star Wars_ parody.”

“Well Lan, Nuke High Stalker the cow whisper prefers ‘inspired by’ rather than ‘parody.’” Pidge and Keith both snicker at that. She looks up at him, glasses flaring in the stage lights. “I’m taking bets on when this will completely fall apart. You want in?”

The cow lets out a long moo and that gets Lance pumping his fist as if he’s making progress. Allura leans over Lance’s shoulder, looking increasingly mystified by the cow’s very existence. Somewhere off to the side, Hunk is gobbling down a full cheese platter and Rolo is lighting a cigarette because no one in charge has told him he couldn’t and Axca is swinging what anyone would hope is a fake laser sword far too close to the boom operator.

“Put me down for within the next ten minutes.”

Six minutes and thirty-two seconds later, Axca takes one dancing step too far. She slices the sword up and cuts the boom mic clear in half. The operator lets out a horrified shout and that’s all the warning Rolo gets to leap out of the way. The broken top crashes inches from him and the shock causes his cigarette to drop from his lips, fire and ash landing on his highly flammable bear costume. His right side is up in flames within seconds. Everyone on the soundstage is screaming, but it’s Hunk tossing the cheese plate and the metal hitting the ground that spooks the cow. It stampedes off the set, sending Lance and Allura falling back, and hightails out the open stage doors, almost bowling over the concerned security who rushed in.

By the smallest stroke of luck, the sprinkler system does not go off. They’re spared hundred of thousands of dollars in equipment damage, one less thing Lance will have to explain to Shiro and Alfor.

As Keith watches the aftermath unfold, Rolo carted off to a medical bay and the prop masters and Axca explaining to security where they got the sword, he cannot help but ask, “So who won the pool?”

Pidge taps once on her phone and groans, “We both owe Allura ten bucks.”

Before Keith can comment on the hypocrisy, Lance storms by. “Hey - !” Pidge calls out. Lance spins around and he looks so morose that Keith feels the completely alien inclination to hug him. The heated glare Lance casts at him immediately melts that desire away.

“Not a word, mullet.”

“I didn’t even say anything,” Keith protests, but Lance is gone, leaving him with a guilty looking Pidge. She’s fiddling with her glasses, appearing ready to follow Lance. Keith sighs and places a awkward hand on her shoulder, “There isn’t anything we could have done.”

And even though it’s the truth, Keith cannot shake the guilt either. His eyes track Lance whispering heatedly with Hunk. A steady hand on Lance’s shoulder appears to calm him down minutely and Keith continues watching as Hunk says something in Lance’s ear. Lance’s shoulders drop and he nods. He swears he sees Lance’s nose scrunch up, a sniffle.

But when he jogs back past Keith and onto the stage, Lance looks as he always does, undeservedly confident, a man without a care in the world. “Hey everyone! I’m so sorry - I know this sketch has gone upside down, topside up, crazy shit bananas!” The crew laughs along with Lance. “But I still think we can pull this off! At the very least, the people deserve to see Keith in that ridiculous wig.”

All eyes, like heating missiles, find him.

Keith’s spine stiffens. With every chuckle he hears, he feels his face growing hotter and the steam cannot escape out of the top of head because it’s all trapped under the damn blonde wig. His brain is frying and within seconds, Keith has ripped the wig off his head by the lace. Pidge might be saying something, but Keith does not hear her over the roaring in his ears and his survival instinct chanting get out, get out, get out.

He storms for the doors, wig balled up in his tightly closed fist. Let Lance continue to direct his circus by himself. He’ll never need Keith feeling guilty or sorry on his behalf. Keith feels embarrassed for wasting any of his emotional energy on Lance McClain.

Freedom in the form of gleaming hallway is in sight when Keith slams directly into Hunk’s stone wall chest. His forehead clips Hunk’s chin. When he brushes a hand across the collision site, his fingertips come back covered in green goo. Perfect.

Keith looks up a Hunk, ready to growl _move_ , politeness forgone, but Hunk gets his words in first. “I know this hasn’t gone great so far -”

“There was a fire! Rolo got lit on fire, how are you of all people so calm about this?” Keith once watched Hunk have a minor meltdown because Pidge’s costume lost one rhinestone in a commercial break before the sketch, but Lance practically burns the studio down and Hunk becomes the voice of reason. Add that to the list of reasons to quit before it can get any worse.

But Hunk refuses to budge. “Look, Lance really wants you in this sketch. He wrote this role specifically for you.”

“Clearly to make fun of me.”

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

Keith holds the wig up in front of Hunk’s green face. Hunk flinches. “Maybe the costume is a bit much. But you were the first person he wanted in this, before me, before Allura. He made you the cool sword fighting rogue guy.”

“I’m a strudel maker.”

Hunk holds up his hands, seemingly in defeat. “I can admit the whole thing seems ridiculous, but I think Lance just wants to prove to everyone he can do this and he takes it seriously -” As if predicting Keith will roll his eyes, Hunk levels him a hard stare and it’s enough to make Keith pause. “This might be over, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to actually read the script?”

He passes Keith his own script before walking back over to Lance, who is seemingly at the tail end of a rousing motivational speech. Keith stares longingly down the hall, but his focus drifts down to the script. Damn Hunk and his Shiro-level ability to guilt-trip. Keith settles against the wall by the doors, still ready to bail at a moment’s notice, and reads.

When he reaches the final page, Keith sighs. The guilt is back with a vengeance, churning aggressively in his gut.

Keith glances over at Lance. He now appears to be acting out a scene for the crew, jumping from one side of the narrow stage to the other, demonstrating lunges and kicks as though beating up on himself. The crew is all on the brink of hysterics and Keith’s not sure that’s where Lance wants them to be. But when one of cameraman bursts out laughing, Lance shoots him a toothy grin and a set of finger guns before upping the ante.

It’s been a long, terrible, upside down, topside up, crazy shit bananas day, but not a single crew member walked out on Lance.

Keith lets out another long sigh, but he slowly stretches the wig back over his head. He’ll stand by his hypothesis that Lance designed his character’s costume to embarrass him. But as he keeps his eye on Lance, still leaping and bounding like a trained monkey for the crew’s enjoyment, Keith decides he can help see this through. It’s what the ultimately loyal rogue character would do.

“Grab Coran - he can help organize all the camera angles,” Keith calls to Hunk.

“You got it.” Hunk punctuates his answer with a proud smile that nearly put Shiro’s to shame. Keith silently resolves to never make them proud at the same time - he’s not sure his heart could take the swelling.

He watches Hunk walk through the double doors before stalking towards Lance. He grabs him by the wrist mid-karate chop and pulls him off the stage towards the doors, ignoring his squawk of protest.

“Let’s go find your cow.”

 

...

 

_wednesday_

He’s going to be late for the table read.

In his going on six seasons at _Sketch Space_ , Keith has never been even a second late for table read. It’s not even something he necessarily prides himself in, not something he ever thought to lord over certain Cuban co-anchors who often stroll into table read ten minutes late with an iced coffee and a handful of loose notebook pages. But he’s aware of his spotless record nonetheless, aware of where he should be heading and aware of what’s keeping him.

Iverson’s finishing footing the bill. Keith thought a morning meeting meant touching base over a cheap cup of coffee, but his syrup drenched plate finished in front of him told otherwise. A morning meeting for a high level studio executive meant a two hour sit-down breakfast that bled into brunch, where they touched on everything from projected budget to hot supporting names they could nab to what kind of awards season campaign they’d launch.

Iverson mentioned award buzz and Keith choked on his pancakes. He had never been one to practice acceptance speeches in his bathroom mirror, but Keith would never lie and say he had not fantasized of golden trophies lining his apartment walls.

It’s frivolous and Keith knew that. Why does he need a piece of meaningless metal to tell him he has talent? But Iverson acknowledging that talent by bringing up awards, unprompted, made it that much closer to real.

He listed off the titles like they’re already sure things: best original screenplay, best director for Adam, best picture, and best lead actor for Keith.

But there it is, the great unspeakable flaw in the design.

It would be one thing for Keith to send off a script to a studio, have them pick it up, get a big budget movie made and shoot off a handful of line edits from the comfort of his Sketch Space office. It’s another when Keith sends off a script and after they come back saying they want him to star in it, Keith never says no.

He never says yes either, but he never says no.

Keith sees that irks Iverson, that he’s not prepared to sign on the dotted line when the bill’s all paid and the plates finally cleared away. Instead, Keith shakes his hand. Syrup sticks in the space between their fingers and Iverson grips too tightly. When they part, Keith knows he does not have much longer to make his decision.

Adam, never one to withhold in all the years he’s known him, claps him on the shoulder after Iverson leaves and says, “Really think about this, Keith.”

“You’re just saying that because you want to direct my script,” Keith answers weakly.

“I do. You’re as talented as Shiro said you would be, six years ago.” Keith’s cheeks burn. Adam squeezes his shoulder once before letting go. “Better run. You’re late for table.”

He dashes through West Station, taking every stair three at a time, but halts just outside of the _Sketch Space_ entrance. The show name flashes above the clear glass doors, spelled out in bright bulbs and outlined in bubblegum pink and creamsicle orange. Through the doors, the receptionist waves at him, no doubt wondering why he’s waiting outside, gawking like a moron up at the sign.

He’s thinking that he’s spent over five years now walking in under that sign everyday. If he accepts this new opportunity, will the sign stop being so welcoming? Will it stop flashing like a lighthouse, guiding him home?

It’s ridiculous, he’s ridiculous. It’s a dumb blinking sign and a bulb is out in the “P.” Keith ducks his head and pushes through the door, keeping his head down long after he’s escaped the hubbub of the lobby.

He wants to slink off into his office, close the door and shut out the lights, wallow in self-inflicted isolation.

But he’s late for table read.

He gathers up his laptop and his notes and walks like a person not on the verge of a crisis to the conference room. The slow walk is agonizing - he wants to run, show everyone he’s here, fully, all in and committed - but it’s better not to draw any attention to himself. He slips quietly into the room, head low, and takes the first available seat.

The voices of Hunk and Pidge fade in. It’s more like sounds, laser “pews” and the mighty roar of a lion. He hears Romelle’s sing-song laughter from the other side of the room; she’s forever been the robot lion sketch’s biggest cheerleader. He’s glad he slipped in during this - no one has ever been able to look away from this pitch.

Except he hears sudden shuffling to his left. Seconds later, someone’s elbowing his ribs, all sharp angles. “Pst.”

“Not now, Lance,” Keith grits out, intent on pulling up his Report notes so he’s at least not late and unprepared.

“Pssst.” It’s like a robotic bee buzzing by his ear. Keith wants to swat it, kill it dead.

“Quit it.”

A warm exhale fans the side of his face. “What kept golden boy so long?”

That brings Keith’s eyes up. Lance is right in his face, smirking. But when Keith glares, locks in on his eyes, he swears he sees the barest hint of concern swimming in the blue. Keith’s mouth feels dry when he grumbles out, “I had a thing.”

“A thing?”

Keith hisses, ready to snap.

“Hey anchor-husbands! We’re in the middle of the pitch of a lifetime over here.”

So much for getting through the first half of table read unnoticed. Everyone in the conference room throws focus on him and Lance. Pidge looks irked. Hunk looks a little betrayed. And Shiro acts the part of disappointed head writer, but Keith spots the concern in his eyes from across the long table, far more bald-faced than Lance’s. Keith is forced to look away.

“Sorry, sorry, proceed!” Lance folds his hands under his chin and leans forward, batting his eyelashes like he’s enraptured. While Hunk resumes his laser effects, Pidge discreetly flips Lance off before presenting the next storyboard.

“Happy now?” Keith mumbles, knowing full well Lance cannot respond anymore. And he doesn’t know why he says it. It hardly makes any sense. He just needs to release some of the confusion, and the guilt, and the frustration out. It’s too easy to slip back into Lance being the easiest target.

They make it through the rest of table without incident. A Nyma-Rolo sketch gets picked up. Or it could have been a Nyma-Shay sketch. All the setups and punchlines tangle together. Alfor dismisses them and Keith’s half out the door already, desperate for the sanctuary of his office, when a voice stops him.

“Keith, can we talk?” Shiro remains at the far end of the table, so his voice has to carry across the room. Everyone idling around looks at him like he’s a kid getting called to the principal’s office. He hasn’t been on the receiving end of those looks in a decade.

All he can do is nod and wait by the door for Shiro to finish talking to Alfor. He tries not to notice Hunk, Pidge, and Lance stalling, too noisy to return to their offices. Too bad, he won’t say a word until he and Shiro are safely behind a closed door.

Shiro lets him lead and true to his silent word, neither of them speak until they’re behind Keith’s door. He has time to dump his stuff on his desk and avoid Shiro’s eyes before the dreaded talk begins.

“I spoke to Adam.”

Keith winces. “When could you have had time for that?”

Despite the serious tone Shiro set, he smiles fondly and answers, “Love finds a way.”

“Gross.” Keith sounds like Lance. He feels like Lance too, or what Keith imagines Lance feels when a conversation turns too solemn. He gets this maniac energy about him, does everything in his power to steer the conversation back to happier waters by cracking cheesy jokes and darting around the room. Keith has two modes for dealing with serious conversation he does not want to be a part of: shut down or yell until the other person decides to give up on him. He can’t do either with Shiro, so he senses himself slipping into Lance’s role, trying out a new tactic.

“Said like someone who’s never been in love.”

“Love? Never heard of it.” It seems to be working. Maybe Keith has tapped into Lance’s secret genius.

“Do you want to have a talk about your intimacy issues?”

Keith’s brain short circuits, leaving him spluttering in another stellar Lance impression. “What? No! What are you talking about?”

“Good, we’ll talk about the movie deal then.”

Trapped in a corner, Keith exhales sharply. “I took the meeting.”

Shiro has the patience not say _I know_. He does what Shiro always does when Keith’s about to work himself up: he remains calm in the face of the storm.

“And I feel...excited. Iverson said all these things about awards we could get and I don’t care about any of that, but...he thinks it’s good.”

“It is good,” Shiro says, so firmly he leaves no room for argument.

“But now I just feel guilty for being excited. There’s so much pressure on _Sketch Space_ right now and we need all hands on deck. I can’t be...it can’t be half in, half out.” Keith resists the urge to drag a hand through his hair. He pulls at it anyway. “But it’s going to be six years and I don’t know -”

Keith trails off. Six years. He developed a habit of never saying his tenure out loud. It used to be because he feared putting a number to it meant the countdown would begin, days until they eventually grew tired of him and he’d have to pack up his office. But as the number of years climbed and climbed, saying the number started to make him feel motionless, a sailor stuck in the middle of an endless sea with a broken compass, no definitive direction.

“It’s alright to decide you want something else,” Shiro says all too kindly, as though jumping in the last lifeboat as the ship faces an encroaching storm is the same as parting ways at the dock under impossibly blue skies. The show is quickly sinking under water and Keith is shopping options for an out. As if he’s projecting his thoughts, Shiro continues, “You’re not going to get me to say you’re being selfish.”

Keith sighs, “But isn’t someone responsible for making sure Lance doesn’t burn the Report desk to the ground?”

Shiro chuckles, “I was thinking him and Pidge would make an interesting pair.”

Keith’s reflexive cringe transforms into a full body laughing, imagining Pidge and Lance sitting side by side at the Report desk, both five seconds away from combusting and loving every minute of it. It’d be a tightrope act on a livewire. Anyone would be lucky to watch it happen live.

And that only reminds Keith he would not be one of those lucky people.

“They’d kill each other,” Keith mutters and it sounds like a pettish excuse.

“We said that about you and Lance, too.”

Keith narrows his eyes. “No, you said we’d make a great team.”

“Just to your faces.” Shiro dodges Keith’s attempt to knock him on the head with practiced ease, their own little slapstick routine. “Maybe you should talk to him about it, too.”

Keith folds his arms across his chest, jaw suddenly tense. “Why would I do that?”

“I think you know why.”

Keith has always liked that he and Shiro could tell what the other meant without having to voice it out loud. Keith’s a paradox - a writer who cannot voice any of his spiralling thoughts if he’s asked to speak - and he needs people who can converse in a silent language with him, one built upon years of knowing all his quirks and idiosyncrasies.

And what’s nice about a silent language is that it can be easy to pretend he mishears and misunderstands Shiro’s inflections and implications. It’s selfish, but it’s as easy as living in denial. It just takes practice.

Keith’s gotten so good now that he’s in denial about being in denial. So it’s effortless to say, “It’s none of his business.”

Shiro gives him an unimpressed look. He lets a sullen minute tick by and Keith knows he’s hoping for a crack in the wall, an admission to slip through. When another painful minute goes by without a word, Shiro sighs and moves in front of Keith, placing both hands on his shoulders. “Think about it.”

And because of their silent language fluency, Keith understands he’s talk about more than just leaving, more than just Lance. He swells up with the urge to say he’s spent too many hours thinking over everything, but even if he tries, those words will not come out right.

Instead he says, “Adam said the same thing.”

As he always does at any mention of Adam, Shiro shines. “Great minds do think alike.”

“Great minds spend too much time together.” Keith manages to muster up a half smile and that seems to placate Shiro.

He walks towards the door and Keith goes to see him out. He begins down the hall, but not before looking back to Keith. “You’re really going to think about?”

Keith exaggerates his groan. “Yes, dad.” He swears he hears Pidge laughing in her office to his left. Shiro rolls his eyes, but starts walking again.

Lance winds the bend of the hall at the same time and nearly rams into Shiro. The unresolved tensions of Monday must have given way to stifling awkwardness - Keith can hardly bear looking at the two of them, Lance refusing to meet Shiro’s eye and Shiro searching for the perfect words to smooth over all the stray irritation. Shiro settles on an uncomfortable shoulder clap instead and Keith is sure everyone in the hallway cringes.

Keith returns to his office and Lance follows. “What was that about?”

“You needing to apologize to Shiro,” Keith answers, not bothering to look at Lance, too busy gathering up papers to deliver for cue card creation.

He can still sense Lance bristling, “No, I don’t. But I was talking about whatever weird and serious talk you and Shiro just had. Is it about ratings?”

Keith swallows, tries to reason quickly that it wouldn’t be so bad to tell a tiny white lie. “Yeah, it was about...nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, nothing.” Keith is tired of this call and response game he keeps playing with Lance. He grabs his laptop and makes for the door, doing his best to ignore the suspicious curl of Lance’s frown as he went.

Lance trails behind as Keith heads for the studio, but they’re both forced to stop at a traffic jam disrupting the head offices hallway. The point of interest seems to be Shiro’s office. Keith’s eyes dart to Lance, who’s looking back at him with mirrored confusion.

Lance takes the lead, weaving through the outer circle of interns and junior writers, clearing space for Keith to follow, and only stopping when they reach the epicenter. Most of the cast waits there, their faces various levels of furious.

“Shiro was just in your office,” Lance whispers, glancing around and observing the same foul mood Keith took in. “What could’ve happened between then and now to cause a riot?”

Keith almost says anything can happen nowadays, as they rapidly approach darker times, but he bites his tongue.

“What gives?” Lance asks, needling Rolo in the side.

“Axca just went into Shiro’s office,” he replies, tilting his sharp chin toward the shut door. “To quit.”

“ _What?_ ” Keith and Lance say at the same time, one in a whisper and one in a shout.

“The crown prince of Zarkon Universal gave her an offer she couldn’t refuse.”

“We’re so fucked,” Nyma declares from Rolo’s other side. The groans and moans of approval sound off.

“No. No way,” Lance protests, jostling past Rolo to take dead center in the crowd. “One selfish asshole decides to leave and you all start getting ready to file for space unemployment? The only thing we should be saying to Axca is good riddance for wanting to screw us like this. But we’re playing right into that whiny daddy’s boy’s hands if we decide a few little setbacks are going to stop us from fighting for Sketch Space. I, for one, am not planning on leaving anytime soon. Are any of you?”

Murmurs of agreement ripple through the small mob. Someone in the back shouts, “Hell no!” and the furies start to fade away. Lance stands tall and proud, a Mark Antony on the steps of capitol winning the hearts of Rome. And he finds Keith easily, winks at him like they’re the co-champions of the movement to save the show.

What were those famous three words Caesar said - Et tu, Brute?

Keith’s so fucked.

 

...

 

_wednesday - season 17_

And just like that, it’s over.

He fiddles with an adverb - deletes it, adds it back in, substitutes in a simpler word, deletes that too - until the word loses all coherency and Keith’s eyes are blurry and unfocused. He removes his fingers from the keys and slowly slides his office chair back, putting a solid distant between himself and screen. This far away, his completed script looks like a series of squiggly black lines, undecipherable code.

The full script itself may bear all the meaning of a useless code, but it’s done.

He finished a film script.

His heart trips, unsure whether he feels happy, sad, scared, or an overwhelming mix of all three.

He scoots his chair back to the desk and clicks save. In a fit of curiosity, he clicks on the version history and scrolls all the way down to the bottom.

Created almost four months ago, a little after two in the morning.

A plot first came to him during rehearsal downtime, while distractedly watching the pre-Report sketch blocking. He can hardly remember what the sketch was about now, all he remembers is Pidge crying out “Knowledge or die!” and the plot popped up, a little red flag stacked in his mind. It became an itch at the back of his neck, persistent and noticeable but not bad enough to scratch.

A setting would hit him at the coffee maker - a secret base hidden in crystals. An organization name came to him when Lance spent a week calling him “Samurai” - the Blade of Marmora. But the ideas sprung up like separate points on a blank map, no roads or rivers connecting them together.

Then four months ago, Lance bailed out early on a Thursday night writing session, feigning sickness, and Keith got tired of writing the one-tone political joke in a thousandth variation. He wanted something different, uncomedic, purely fiction.

That’s when the itch spread, became full-body, and Keith was struck with a sickness of his own. He opened the word document and just wrote, an opening scene unfolding on the page, an unmoored young man accepting the opportunity of a lifetime to join a secret society of rebels on a quest to save worlds.

The Friday and Saturday chaos left Keith thinking it had been a strange fluke, a couple of pages he’d forget about with time, maybe dust off years down the line.

Only he kept going back, on the nights when he found nothing funny and the Sundays he had life to himself and the little pockets of time he could steal and give to a fresh project lighting a fire in his veins.

He had not felt that alive with creativity and passion since his first season at _Sketch Space_.

When that thought first crossed his mind, Keith nearly deleted the entire document. He tore into Shiro’s office like a hurricane, shouting about a quarter life crisis and being cursed with an aversion towards stability. At the end of the tirade, Shiro had laughed and ruffled his hair, reminded him they all pursued little passion projects on the side.

Passion project. Keith can work with that.

But now it’s a completed passion project and Keith has no desire to put it up on a shelf, let it collect dust with a hundred finished sketches. He wants to pursue draft two and draft fifteen and however many drafts it takes to bring his script from page to screen.

Keith doesn’t know what that path will look like, never bothered to attune himself the inner workings of the studio system, the writing game. He never thought he’d have to play that game, didn’t care to learn the rules when he believed his career began and ended with Sketch Space. The newfound desire to play came as an admission to himself, an acknowledgement that _Sketch Space_ may not be all he ever wants.

But the very thought of that makes his head ache. He presses save on the document a final time and closes it, not ready yet to begin on round two. The clock tells him he doesn’t have to be in wardrobe for another few hours, the perfect amount of time to cure the pounding in his head by sleeping like the dead.

He slams his door shut and kills all the lights. He strips out of his shirt and it’s barely hit the floor before Keith has collapsed on his couch and drifted off into oblivion.

Oblivion transforms - he’s on a planet. No, a large space station. No, a castle glowing bright white and cool blue. The background fades in and out of focus, a kaleidoscope of hazy colors swirling around him. But his feet are on solid ground and there’s a sword in his hand, red-hilted and heavy.

There are footsteps behind him, thundering on metal, or crunching on sand. He slowly turns his head, grip on the sword tightening instinctively.

Time flashes forward like a comic book cut scene and his sword is in front of him, clanging against the long purple blade of another. His opponent must be mere inches away from his face, visage reflected in his sword, but he cannot see him clearly.

It’s his voice that rings out, loud and uncompromising. “You’re a traitor.” His opponent pushes forward with overwhelming force, sending him sprawling on his back against the unforgiving metal floor. “You’re leaving your friends to die. You’re leaving your show to perish.”

His eyes screw shut, but he know the killing blow is coming. He raises his sword, a thin steel shield and his last defense, and prepares for the heavy below.

Bang.

Keith’s eyes fly open.

He’s flat on his back, just as in the dream, but he feels the familiar scratchy upholstery of his office couch. He rises, slightly, leaning back on one elbow while rubbing his crusted eyes with his other hand. When his blurry vision starts to clear, he searches for the source of noise.

The source announces himself first.

“Hey!” Lance is taking up all the space in his doorway. The light of the hallway halos around him, cutting a sharp silhouette. Keith has to squint to bear the glow. “Sitting in the dark? You only continue to confirm you are, in fact, a vampire. Though I guess space would be, like, the perfect place for a vampire, right? Technically no sun. You know, why is it vampires are totally fine with artificial light, but UVs -”

“What do you want, Lance?”

The vampire musings stop and Lance holds up a stack pages. “Dude, _Kaltenecker’s Adventures in Space_? Chapter Four: The Milkshakes Reborn? We’re supposed to shoot the big dramatic rescue in like...now.” Lance is not wearing a watch. He indicates to his bare wrist anyway.

“You’ve been on the Report for half a year now, you’re really not supposed to keep writing...cow content.” Keith starts getting up anyway, knowing Lance would drag him across the floor the entire way if it meant finishing a Kaltenecker sketch. He fumbles around for the light switch. When the overheads hum to life, Keith hears Lance let out an aborted whine behind him. “What now?”

“You’re -” Lance motions up and down, but his head is ducked and Keith has a hard time reading his expression. “Why aren’t you wearing a shirt, you...you weirdo mullet?”

Keith snatches up his black v-neck and yanks it over his head before turning to glare at Lance. “I was napping and last time I checked -” Keith sweeps his arm across the space, “my office.”

“Whatever,” Lance mutters and Keith’s eyes narrow even more. That’s the best Lance could come back with? Who knew Lance McClain, flirt of the universe as voted by himself, could be such a prude. Keith has grown used to seeing Lance’s face go scarlet with anger and pink with embarrassment (a personal favorite shade), but he rarely sees Lance’s cheeks this rosy. Not since the early days with Allura.

“Well!” Lance all but shouts, jolting Keith off that train of thought. “Let’s get going, can’t leave the audiences in suspense. Kaltenecker’s gotta save a certain Swedish strudel maker turned sword swinging bounty hunter from -”

“Being frozen in carbonite?” Keith says it just to see his second favorite shade of Lance, magenta with indignation.

Keith strolls down the hall, laughing to himself, as Lance sputters in the doorway - “For the last time, it’s not _Star Wars_ , Keith!”

He hears Lance’s footsteps pounding across the metal floor, echoing off the walls as he tries to catch up. If Keith slows a little, it’s only because Lance has never failed in distracting Keith from anything and everything they’re supposed to be doing. And Keith could really use that all encompassing distraction right about now.

 

...

 

_thursday_

Keith’s internal clock is screaming at him to pack up and go.

He was up all last night trying to think of nothing and when he failed to force his mind into a blank slate, he tried to think of anything but the show or Axca or his script or Lance. That led to binge watching _Monty Python_ sketches at three in the morning, letting absurdist comedy wallpaper over the absurdism of his life.

And here he is, three in the morning again, still wishing all thoughts away to no avail.

“Hey, come take a look at this. I think I finally cracked that resort planet summit joke.”

Lance has his computer perched on his chest, the screen casting a blue glow over his face. He’s been blinking more rapidly than normal for a half-hour, one of his tired tells, but he’s been focused all night, almost brutally so. They haven’t bickered once in the last six hours and Keith’s exhaustion cannot take all the blame for that.

Keith knows why Lance has traded banter for extreme efficiency. It’s why he hasn’t come close to poking fun at his all work, no play attitude.

“Just read it to me.”

“The Space Summit will be voting next week on whether or not resort planets without formal governments will be allowed full voting rights in the Summit. All well rested and tanned Summit leadership have declined to comment.” Lance’s pauses, glancing at Keith over the top of his screen. “Get it? Cause they don’t want to get banned from the resort planets?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Thanks for that ringing endorsement.” There’s a hard tap - no doubt he deleted the joke. Lance then closes his laptop and places it on the coffee table. He must be making a final snack run. He’s about to ask Lance to get him another cup of coffee, which would be a mistake, when he says, “Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“You agree with what I said yesterday, right? We’re not totally fucked.” Lance starts pulling at his bottom lip with his teeth. It makes him look oddly vulnerable.

At least he’s asking something Keith can answer with conviction. The show will fight until the bitter end. Shiro will be sure of that. “We’re not totally fucked.”

“Cause it’s just…” Lance pauses, puts a hint of his bravado back on. “Look, I obviously hate to admit this, but you know a lot more about the ratings and all the boring business-y stuff.”

“The stuff you should also be paying attention to?” Keith asks, eyebrow piqued.

“Hey, I’m just here to be talent and a beautiful face.”

Keith shakes his head and tampers down his smile. He starts turning back to his laptop, the flash of on-brand Lance granting him a spike of energy. Perhaps he can even muster up a joke. But Lance’s leg continues shaking rapidly and he blurts out, “You were just very un-Mullet like with Allura on Tuesday.”

Keith’s shoulders tense. “I had to be professional.”

“But you’re like the reigning champ of being unprofessional.”

“You’re going to give away your only title to me? I’m honored.”

Lance flips him off, but the mood in the room does not shift a hair. They’re teetering on the brink of at least three different conversations Keith does not want to have and Lance’s fidgeting and flushed face clues Keith into which cliff Lance wants to dive off of.

Keith always has been the kind of person who has to jump first.

“Just ask Lance.”

Lance’s eyes dart to him before returning to an intense study of his Green Lantern figurine. He plays dumb. “Ask what?”

“You want to know why I’m not shitting talk Lotor, right?”

Lance’s fingers still around the figurine. He sighs. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it that bluntly…”

If Lance wanted to see Keith grow blunter, Keith could ask why. Why did Lance care about what Keith thinks of Lotor beyond their communal anger at him for stabbing _Sketch Space_ repeatedly in the back? But Keith is too weary to watch Lance jump through hoops to explain himself in vague terms and muttered excuses.

And maybe Keith himself will learn to take some stock in the truth will set you free.

Keith highly doubts that, but unleashing his negative feelings about Lotor might be as cathartic as Lance makes it out to be.

“Lotor and I…” Keith trails off, unsure of the words that belong after that pair.

“Yeah, I kinda knew. I mean, everyone kinda knew.” Lance’s face is expressionless, a rarity, but his tone is kind.

It’s that tone that keeps Keith grounded, stops him from lashing out in indignation at the idea that office gossip equated to everyone knowing what Keith did or what Keith felt. He takes a deep breath before quietly saying, “It was...I think it was a lot more than people thought it was.”

Lance’s mouth falls in a deep frown, though he quickly tries to recover his blank facade. It reminds Keith of what Coran routinely tuts at him “Never play poker on a resort planet, my dear boy. Everything you are is spelled out so clearly on your face.” Lance’s never happy with that piece of sage advice, but what Keith’s never told him is that he likes Lance’s poker-less face on most days. He hates having to read into other people’s carefully constructed exteriors.

Lotor’s was the most carefully constructed of all.

“...were you in love with him?” Lance asks, so softly it’s nearly inaudible, and his eyes are suddenly very interested in the Green Lantern again. Keith expects him to back track the question.

Then the seconds tick by and Lance doesn’t take it back.

It makes Keith afraid he’ll say something he can’t take back either.

All of it was open-ended madness - months of four a.m. phone sex and cold Tuesday morning head nods, quiet seething jealousy in the bars but aversion to meeting at any location that could resemble a date. And it was deceivingly easy at twenty-four to convince himself that’s all he’d ever want. When you’re as restless as Keith believed himself to be, a relationship looks like a special kind of trapped torture. Keith did not want to a play a game called Monogamy where the only prize at the end appeared to be mutual resentment.

Resentment that meant the other man walks out the door.

Lotor could never walk out the door if Keith refused to let him past the threshold. Until he did start walking out the door, over and over again, morning after morning, until Keith became too used to the sound of his front door clicking shut and the feeling of a warm but empty space in his bed.

And what never began as love still ended in aching loneliness. Keith wishes someone had told him that came with the mutual resentment.

Lance’s is looking at him again, tired eyes light and unguarded. If Keith bared his soul to him now, would Lance bare his back?

There are so many things he could let slip past the defenses.

_I don’t think I loved Lotor, but it hurts like I did._

_I don’t think I ever could have really loved Lotor because I was always wanting something else._

_If I asked you to remember what happened the night before Lotor, what would you say?_

This slips out instead, “I think I might be leaving _Sketch Space_.”

“Because of Lotor!?” Lance screeches, startling Keith so much that he nearly falls out of his chair.

As soon as he recovers from almost breaking his neck, Keith scowls at Lance. “No, you idiot.” Though Keith is close to grateful that the awkward, vulnerable tension has filtered out of the room. They’re standing on familiar ground again, even if it’s ground marred by old irritations and arguments.

“Well, you announce you’re leaving while we were talking about your last relationship with a guy who’s about to start his own show, so I don’t think that was the craziest thing to infer!”

“I know,” Keith grits out, trying not to match Lance’s volume. “It has nothing to do with Lotor. I was starting to think about leaving way before anything even happened with him.”

“Like since when?” Lance lowers his volume, but he stands and somehow that makes Keith more uneasy.

“Since…” Keith doesn’t want to put a date to it because every option, down to the second, feels like it could be twisted and interpreted wrong. But Lance’s stare bores into him and Keith knows he’ll demand an answer. “I don’t know, mid-Season 17 maybe? That’s around the time I finished the first draft of the script.”

“Script?” Lance puts on his blank face again, but he really should never play poker - Keith can see the anger simmering only centimeters beneath the surface.

“I wrote a movie script, about two years ago, and...it took awhile, editing and...I honestly can’t believe I had the patience for it.” Keith hopes Lance will make some sign of agreement, something to chill anger, but Lance remains impervious. “But I got picked up by an agent, who shopped the script out to studios and...Garrison Pictures wants to pick it up. But part of the deal will be me starring in the movie, so I’d have to leave _Sketch Space_ next season...maybe earlier.”

“And were you ever going to tell us?”

“I’m telling you right now,” Keith offers weakly.

Lance scoffs, incredulous. “Because it’s four in the morning and you didn’t want to admit to being in love with Lotor, so you changed the subject. If this conversation never happened, would we have had to hear about it on some podcast, too?”

Keith’s temper flares. “That’s not fair.”

Lance seems to ignore him completely. He takes a few prowling steps away from the couch, a lion ready to pounce. What he says next comes out low and accusing. “And I bet it’s just a coincidence you started thinking about leaving right when I was made co-anchor.”

The last of Keith’s patience snaps, the sound nearly tangible. “Yeah Lance, it is! Because not everything’s about you. In fact, nothing in my life’s really about you.”

Keith regrets it the split second after the echo of the words fades. The only thing he has succeeded in is putting an expression on Lance’s face. He’s crestfallen, all the heat in eyes rapidly evaporating to leave behind empty acceptance.

Keith needs to take it back, but he’s not sure how. What he said is a near-truth, a half-lie. The script never had anything to do with Lance and that’s the whole truth. Lotor never had anything to do with Lance and that might be true, but just barely. And leaving has everything and nothing to do with Lance, just as it has everything and nothing to do with Lotor, or with Shiro, or with anyone who has made an impression on his life in the last five and a half years.

It makes Keith long for the times when every decision made affected him and him alone. But that’s a near-truth, half-lie too.

The room is oppressively silent now and Lance looks like he has no interest in changing that. So Keith squares his shoulders and decides he’ll pick up his share of the pieces, salvage what he could of their night, of his own confession.

“That came out wrong.”

When Keith meets Lance’s eyes again, they’re cold.

“Did it?”

Keith shrugs helplessly. “Yeah, Lance. What else do you want me to say?”

Lance shakes his head gravely, disbelief flooding his features. Keith isn’t sure he prefers that to the emptiness. Lance takes a step back, putting himself a good foot closer to the door. “You really wouldn’t have said good-bye, would you? Your office would have just been cleared out one day and we’d have to hear it from Shiro.”

The accusation stings, maybe more than it should, maybe because Lance should know him better than that or maybe because he knows him a little too well. “No, that’s not -”

In an instant, Lance’s anger swells back up again and he throw his arms, perhaps just to give the rage-induced energy some place to go. “You know what, good riddance! We don’t need you. You seem like you’ve made up your mind, so go off and be some dead faced blockbuster movie star. And hey look, you’ve got the emotionless part down already.”

“Lance -”

“No, no, seriously. We’re going to be fine. Go have fun with your dumb movie. Maybe I’ll read the Starpedia summary.” Lance stalks the remaining distance towards the door, granting Keith one last scathing glare before he smashes the door closed.

The crashing echo pierces ears and somehow cuts Keith deeper than anything Lance said.

 

...

 

_thursday - season 18_

“Goo, for a lack of a better word, is good.”

Tap, tap, tap, tap. The words on the screen are starting to blur together, a’s in the spaces y’s should be, b’s mushing into d’s.

“Goo, for a lack of a better word...is good.”

He deletes an entire paragraph without reading it back. It’s all gibberish - the words on the page, the thoughts in his mind, Lance elongating the word goo into oblivion.

“Gooooo -”

“I’m going to go ahead and veto the _Goodfellas_ goo joke.”

Lance splutters. “Good-...you think... _Goodfellas_! Keith, that’s like... _the_ line from _Wall Street_.”

Keith knows exactly where the line originates from, but it’s three in the morning and the only thing that’s remotely fun anymore is riling Lance up. They’ve been at this for hours - vetoing each others bad jokes, making too many stops at the vending machine (Lance) and the coffee maker (Keith), and picking petty fights in the spaces between. Neither of them want to be the first to cave and go home, but neither of them have the energy to write anything remotely good. And so the loop continues going round. It appears this pointless argument will be about what classic movies Keith has had the gall not to see.

He zones back in around the tailend of Lance rattling off mobster movies - a few Altean, maybe one Galran, but the majority Earth. One of the little things Keith has noticed about Lance over the years is his stubborn commitment to keeping up on Earth pop culture.

“...and look I understand not watching the shitty _Godfather_ remakes from like twelve years ago, but do you even know who Marlon Brando is…”

Keith has to roll his eyes at that one, but he then lets his eyes drift around Lance’s office. Every flat surface is covered in collectible figurines, most with paint thinning, vintage perhaps. He has three mugs he uses in rotation - one Spiderman, one S _tar Trek_ , and one from a fantasy series Keith will never admit he despises. His walls are an explosion of color, an amatuer art museum of fanmade pieces of the Sketch Space cast alongside prints of _The Wizard of Oz_ and _The Fugitive_ , and, strangest of all, _Roman Holiday_. It’s an absolute mess, but it’s so clearly a mess curated with love.

There’s a finished movie script in Keith’s office and he wonders again if Lance would be the person to show that to.

But his heart seizes with terror at the mere thought of showing the script to anyone, as if speaking of it will out him as a defector. Keith pivots instead, moving out of Lance’s desk chair and making like he’s stretching his legs, wandering over to the other side of the room and cutting into Lance’s rant, “What’s this?”

Keith motions up to the largest poster in the room. It takes up half a wall. In the center of the poster, a large hand holds up a gold cup into a cloudy blue sky. The little figure emerging from the cup - or was it a grail as the title suggest? - were dressed in medieval garb. Keith used to think Lance’s taste erred exclusively toward cheesy science fiction and explosive action flicks, but his taste appeared ever evolving and infinitely expansive.

“Uhm, I’m sorry, I probably hallucinated but did you, Keith Kogane, a person who writes comedy for a living, just say you have never seen _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_?”

Keith thinks he may live to regret his next word, but says it anyway. “Yes?”

Lance stares at him with bug-eyed disbelief before yelling at the top of his lungs, “Pidge! Keith just said he’s never seen _Monty Python and the Holy Grail!_ ”

A pterodactyl cry sounds from down the hall. Seconds later, Pidge flies into the room. “He said what?!”

Hunk clamors in after her. “He said what?”

Three pairs of horrified eyes are pinned on him. It all seems very excessive for a movie that’s poster looks like it was made in an outdated Paint application. Keith shrugs, unapologetic. “I’ve never seen Monty...whatever and the grail.”

Lance slowly shakes his head, looking truly aggrieved. “Oh Keith, you beautiful uncultured half space cat -”

“Excuse me?”

Pidge turns sharply on her heel and stalks out the door, “I’m going to get the DVD.”

Hunk perks up and rushes to follow her, calling “I’m getting the popcorn!”

Lance starts busying himself setting up his TV and fluffing up his pillow, which leaves Keith to stand awkwardly under the shadow of the movie poster that started it all, unsure he wants to have an impromptu movie night at three fifteen and equally unsure how to refuse.

And refusal goes out the window when Lance snags his wrist and drags him to couch, forcefully sitting him down and collapsing next to him, trapping Keith between the armrest and Lance’s over-warm body. “I can see the super rusty wheels in your head turning, mullet. You’re not getting out of this.”  
  
The edge of the armest is digging into his ribs. He squirms a little, trying to find a comfortable position that does not end up with his body pressed even more snuggly into Lance’s side. Lance either doesn’t notice the squirming or willfully ignores it. He’s immovable. By the time Hunk and Pidge reenter, Keith has resigned to slouching down and hugging his arms around his chest, resolved to take up as little space as possible.

“Time to watch the greatest masterpiece ever made.” Pidge takes the time to hold up the DVD as though it’s the grail before sliding it into the DVD player.

The couch dips and Lance shifts even closer to Keith to make room for Hunk, Pidge, and a massive bowl of popcorn. Keith’s hyper aware of Lance’s arm, now slung carelessly over the back of the couch, brushing over Keith’s shoulders. His eyes stay stubbornly forward as the opening credits roll.

Since when did his body start reacting to every tiny move Lance made? Why do his cheeks heat up when Lance’s fingertips brush unconsciously across his upper arm? It has to be a case of four in the morning madness, his tired mind inventing emotions that are not there.

He lets the movie wash over him, chasing distraction like the knights on the screen chase their holy grail. It nearly works - he laughs in all the right places. But Lance laughs at all the same lines and Keith can feel his shoulders shaking. Whenever Keith leans over to grab a handful of popcorn, he catches Lance’s smiling face out of the corner of his eyes. His heart, a traitor, pumps a little faster each time.

As the clock nears closer to five and the movie draws to a close, Pidge and Hunk are snoring and drooling on top of each other.

Worse - or better - yet, Lance’s head has lolled to the side, fallen on Keith’s shoulder. He’s awake, barely. When the credits roll, he blinks up blearily at Keith. “Didya like it?”

Seeing the exhaustion in Lance’s eyes makes Keith yawn before answering. “Yeah...yeah, I did. How did you find this movie though? It must be more than a hundred years old.”

Lance yawns too, head lifting a little. Keith tries not to mourn the loss. “My family...we never had any of the super up to date technology growing up, so we’d always watch” - another yawn - “the old stuff my dad kept from his childhood and his dad’s childhood. He loves _Monty Python_ and we used to always” - a third yawn - “always watch at Christmas. I’m the one who showed it to Hunk and Pidge.”

Keith finds himself smiling, but he can’t imagine Lance sees. His eyes are closed, his head close to rolling down onto Keith’s chest. “Uh, Lance?”

“Shhh, time for sleep.”

“Yeah, I know, that’s why I think I’m going to…”

Lance throws an arm across Keith’s waist, barring him from slipping away. Keith tries in vain to maneuver out of the octopus hold. “Lance!”

Lance’s head shifts, breath fanning his cheek, and he leans in to brush a kiss against the corner of his mouth. “Shhhh, g’night.” His head drops back down and he lets out a little snore moments later. He’s asleep, blissfully unaware of the crisis he’s thrust upon Keith.

Keith stays trapped in Lance’s hold, but his body’s no longer planning on moving. He’s frozen, mind reeling in forced playback, analyzing the last few minutes frame by frame, trying to pick out some clue of how it led here and how he reacts after. But his brain gets caught in a loop, replaying the same split second, Lance’s lips brushing his.

And after a hundred rewinds, Keith falls into a fitful sleep.

He wakes with a crick in his neck and a sore left side, but the couch is empty. So is the office. He doesn’t know if he should wait, stay in Lance’s space a little longer, thank him for sharing a tiny piece of himself in the form of a goofy seventies movie. The strangeness of it all makes Keith’s antsy, to the point he gathers up his stuff and decides he doesn’t have to see Lance until dress.

That plan goes instantly off the rails when Keith bumps into Lance on his way out the door.

“Hey, man!” He looks unfairly rested, the _Star Trek_ mug in his hand the only sign he needs an injection of energy. “You liked the movie last night, right?”

Keith opens his mouth and not a word comes out. His mouth is too dry. He’s forced to nod, wait on Lance to call him crazy like he loves to do when Keith cannot function like a social creature. Surprisingly, Lance only smiles, “Awesome! I can’t remember anything past the Knights who say Ni, honestly. Glad you made it to the end.”

“...what?”

“Right? I’ve never fallen asleep during _Monty Python_ before. That’s like a crime against comedy. I blame Raucous Report. It’s cutting into my beauty sleep.” Lance sighs with overdramatic bitterness. “I guess that’s the price we pay to give the people what they want.”

Lance brushes past Keith and enters his office, whistling as he goes. “See ya later!”

Keith walks the short distance to his office on autopilot. He shuts the door behind him and press his back against it, head banging against the wood.

He doesn’t remember.

And why would he? They were both half-asleep long before the movie started playing. His own memories of what happened in what order and who the knights who say Ni were are all muddled. But what came after, that he can replay with perfect clarity.

And Lance doesn’t remember.

Two roads open up to him. He can pull Lance aside during dress tonight, he can confess to what happened last night, press him to say if it meant anything, even if it all happened in a sleep-deprived haze. Then it will be Lance who has the choice, acceptance or rejection.

Or Keith can build a wall. He’s very good at it. He knows where to build it, how to reinforce it, what it takes to maintain it. And perhaps, alone in the darkness, the feelings that emerged into the light last night will shrivel up, like a plant without sunshine. It’s not as if he asked for the plant to start blooming. It was Lance that snuck up on him, planting the seeds without knowing it and leaving Keith to take care of it. It’s so typical of them, so maybe now is the time for a break from the pattern.

Lance doesn’t remember. Neither does Keith.

That’s the night Keith has one too many drinks at the post-dress space bar hop. Lotor circles him all night, like he has been for all the months since Allura left the show and ended their relationship. When more alcohol is in his veins than blood, it starts looking like a good idea. And at bar number three, it starts tasting like a good idea, too.

And when he leaves that bar, not to go back to his own apartment, he passes Lance and thinks he might look a little down. Has to be a trick of the neon lights.

He’ll never blame Lance for it, him winding up with Lotor that night and so many nights after. He and Lance are meant to be friends, or rivals, or whatever the flavor of the month is.

At least, that’s what the sign on the new wall says.

 

...

 

_friday_

Keith despises fighting with Lance.

The people who never knew them well, the casual observers of their relationship, could argue all they ever did was fight. But the biting banter had no real bite. It was verbal sparring with staffs not swords, mouths firing off blanks. They’ve known each other for almost five years now, well enough to know when they get too close to drawing blood. Keith never wants to hurt Lance, intentionally or unintentionally. He’s always thought Lance grew to want the same, hopes for that still.

Lance has avoided him all day, though. They typically touch base with each other five, ten, fifteen times on a Friday, going over last minute line corrections, adding in a few jokes if any extreme news comes hot of the presses. They fell into the habit of bringing each other lunch, alternating weeks, but when Keith arrives at Lance’s office with olive branch empanadas, Lance is nowhere to be found.

When Keith stomps into Shiro’s office and shoves the food in his direction, Shiro’s kind enough to accept it with only a few leading questions. Keith answers them all with a variation on “Lance is being a dick” and each time he ignores the churning of his stomach, the unpleasant taste on his tongue.

But it really comes to a head when Lance misses their long-standing tradition to eat dinner together before going through the motions of dress. It makes for very awkward conversation with Pidge and Hunk over goo tacos until Hunk finally cracks.

“This isn’t me blaming you or anything, Keith, but where’s Lance? Did something happen between you two?”

“Are the anchor-husbands divorcing? I call living with Keith!” A spray of goo leaves Pidge’s mouth.

Keith crinkles his nose in distaste and continues shredding his taco to smithereens with his fork. Lance would have made at least three jokes by now about Keith eating tacos with utensils and not how the space gods intended them to be eaten. Keith would have shot back he makes that joke every time and wouldn’t it be the human gods’ intentions since tacos are an Earth creation.

Pidge waving a hand in his face distracts him from playing out the whole line of banter in his head. “Space station to Keith - what’s up with Lance?”

“How should I know?” Keith grumbles, throwing his fork down and leaning back against the couch with arms folded.

“Spoken like someone who definitely knows,” Hunks says. And it’s strange, Keith realizes, that Lance has not gone to Hunk about this. In his constant wonder about where Lance was at any given time today, it never occurred to Keith that Lance may have told Hunk or Pidge about Keith’s potential plan to leave the show. And knowing Pidge and especially know Hunk, they would have brought it up by now if they knew.

It’s comforting to know Lance kept his secret, even in his anger, but worrying that Lance hasn’t sought any solace from his best friends.

“Lance and I got into a fight last night,” Keith admits.

“Like a Lance and Keith fight or a _fight_?” Pidge asks and Keith knows everyone in the room automatically understands the difference.

A Lance-and-Keith fight starts with bickering taken only a little over the line, continues with both of them stewing for a day or so, and ends with non-apologies where the one a tiny bit more in the wrong strolls into the other’s office and pretends nothing ever happened. Sure, there were times when Keith wished Lance admitted to what he did wrong and there were other times when Keith wished he could put into words what he did wrong back. But they always kept coming back to each other and if the end result was good, why tamper with the process?

In a _fight_ , per Pidge’s inflection, Keith isn’t sure their process could ever result in a good outcome. Keith was ready to eat lunch together earlier today, but he’s start to think he’d have only sat down with Lance if he was ready to offer an apology, a genuine one. Is that something Lance would be prepared to offer? Would Keith have summed up the words to offer one in return?

All signs point to no.

It’s terrifying.

“So a _fight_ ,” Hunk says softly. Keith must have stayed silent for too long, looked too brooding. Hunk and Pidge are staring at him with unconcealed pity in their eyes. Keith finds himself shifting uneasily under the twin gazes.

“Yeah, it was…” Keith wants to stop lying, he genuinely does, but it’s Friday night, the clock counting down to dress, and he cannot drag two other cast members into the wreckage. He’ll tell them on Sunday, no later. “It started with some stuff about Lotor and then it just...got out of control, I guess. I don’t -”

“ _Oh_ ,” Hunk says, eyes widening.

“Spoken like someone who definitely knows something,” Keith says, shooting Hunk’s words back at him.

“Well, would you look at the time!” Hunk exclaims without looking at any kind of timepiece. He starts gathering up his food while tripping towards the door, Pidge hot on his heels. “We better be going, the robot lion sketch can’t last-minute rehearse itself!”

“That didn’t even get picked up this week!” Keith protests.

“Miracles can happen, Keith!” Hunk yells before he hurries out the door.

Pidge lingers, giving Keith a loaded look that only confuses him further. “Make sure you talk to Lance after dress. I know he was definitely an idiot last night, but give communicating like real emotionally unconstipated people a try.”

She leaves before Keith can continue protesting.

He spends his few remaining hours before dress pacing his office, covering every square inch, planning out lines to say to Lance, hoping like Hunk that a miracle will occur tonight and he’d find the simple magic words to say that will smooth everything over.

If only Keith knew what he wanted from Lance, outside of Lance speaking to him again.

The reign of silence soldiers on even as Lance has to be in Keith’s presence as dress begins. He pointedly stands in the opposite wing of the studio, leaving Keith to stare at him from across the set, sketches and set changes blocking most of him from sight.

And when they’re ushered on to the stage, the Report desk gleaming and their chairs waiting for them, Lance does not cast a single look his way. He has his eyes glued to the fake script pages they lay out on the desk, focused on words neither of them will be uttering because that’s preferable to focusing on Keith.

The cold shoulder has Keith ready to tear his hair out, but he has no time, not when they’re being cued to start and the dress audience cheers them on.

The cheers become less pronounced as they both stumble through the Report, minds miles away. The laughter all sounds canned by the end. Keith’s sure Alfor and Shiro will be looking for them after the show. Lance seems uncaring at best, ripping his mic off as soon as the stage manager announces “We’re out!” and stalking off the set.

Choosing to trust his first impulse, Keith runs after him.

He snags Lance by the wrist and hauls him the rest of the way off set, doesn’t stop moving until they reach Lance’s office. Lance is twisting and pulling every step of the way, swearing under his breath in Spanish. Keith ignores him until the door is closed.

“We have to talk.”

“Fuck that,” Lance growls and darts toward the door. Keith presses his back against it. “This is unlawful imprisonment!”

“Lance! We have to talk,” Keith repeats, more adamant.

“I don’t have to listen to a quitter.” Lance’s hand shoots out to grab the door handle. Keith’s hand beats him to it.

“I said I _might_ be leaving _Sketch Space_. I -” Keith clears his throat, buying time, trying to remember the lines he rehearsed earlier. “I keep going back and forth about it...whether it’s the right decision to go.”

Lance scrunches his face, suspicious. “And why’s that.”

“Everyone keeps saying it...we could be fucked.” Keith’s loath to admit it, but as Lance said last night, Keith is intimately familiar with the business side of Sketch Space. He knows the numbers have not been good just like he knows it could get worse with Lotor’s new show competing in their time slot. “I don’t want to make that worse.”

“Oh get over yourself, dude. The show isn’t going to end just because you leave next season.”

“But how do you think it looks...after Lotor’s comments, the announcement of his new show, Axca going over to his side, all of this on top of the bad ratings last season. If they take this and they announce it next week or the week after, people will start reporting that we’re all looking for different options.”

“So then Shiro or Alfor steps us and says we’re not, no big deal.” Lance shrugs it off like it’s nothing, like Shiro and Alfor constantly having to take on more challenges, unnecessary ones, has little to do with them, with Keith.

“Yeah no big deal, Shiro and Alfor having to go on the defense again because the shitty kid they took a chance on thinks he’s…” Keith cuts himself off. Lance’s face morphs instantly, all the frustration and anger vanishing. Keith’s not sure he can bear those emotions replaced by pity. For the first time in the conversation, he ducks his head, unable to meet Lance’s eyes anymore.

“Do you really think Shiro or any of us will think you’re ungrateful?” Lance asks softly. “That’s a bad joke, even for you, Mullet.”

“You don’t get it,” Keith tells the floor, his scuffed dress shoes, anything but Lance.

“So explain it to me,” Lance replies, voice still unbearably soft.

Keith takes a step away from the door, but avoids entering Lance’s orbit. He’s too afraid of the strength of his gravity.

“I don’t want to fight,” Lance confesses.

“You’re the one who started it yesterday.”

Lance sighs. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.” Keith nods once in acknowledgement, but says nothing. Everything he rehearsed, everything he wanted to say, sounds useless in his head now, all empty platitudes and insincere apologies. Nothing compares to what he wants to say, the unsung musings of his heart that have been piling up for weeks.

“Talk to me. Please?”

How did Keith explain to Lance that being at _Sketch Space_ now felt both like running a marathon he’d never finish and standing completely still? In theory, the environment of Sketch Space should be perfect for a cagey boy who never wanted to stop moving because there was always something to do, someone to talk to, a place to be but not for too long.

Only familiarity starts seeping in when the places to be are all contained to one studio, the people all keeping the same names and same faces, the something to do always being a sketch to write or a cue card to read. And with familiarity came the antsy feeling that this was all his to lose, all theirs to take away.

It’s a crushing reminder that he’ll always be the kid who has to run first, disappear with the sunset before someone can tell him to go.

There are no sunsets or sunrises in space, but there are infinite places to disappear to if he went out looking.

It all seems indescribable to someone like Lance, who is always going back to places and putting down roots so deeply buried in the earth he becomes immovable. Lance can belong, Lance can stay put, Lance can find all the reasons not to run. He’ll never understand Keith, even as Keith desperately wants exactly that.

And isn’t that what writing is - a shout into the void for mutual understanding?

“I feel like I’m trapped,” Keith whispers, collapsing on the couch, curling in on himself. “And no matter what I choose, I’ll be disappointing someone.”

Lance does not look stunned or disbelieving or dismissive, though he does shrug his shoulders. “Well yeah. You’re always gonna disappoint someone when you make a big decision. But you’re not going to be disappointing anyone that matters.” He sinks down on the couch next to Keith and knocks his shoulder lightly. “...unless you’re an idiot and decide to do some self-sacrificial bullshit because you think it’s what’s best for everyone. Then you’ll end up disappointing yourself.”

Keith blinks at Lance, mind momentarily blank. He’s reminded, strangely, of their first meeting with Alfor as co-anchors, stumbling upon a side of Lance he had never seen before. One of these days he’ll have to stop underestimating Lance. Or perhaps Lance will just never cease to surprise and amazing Keith. “That was all really...wise, Lance.”

“You’re not the only one who can write deep, dramatic shit,” Lance says, nudging Keith’s shoulder once more. “Plus even if you go, you’re not going to get around talking to us every day. We’re gonna call you so often, you won’t miss us, you’ll just always be making that face where you look like you’re planning homicide.”

Keith attempts to make the face Lance’s talking about, eyes narrowed and mouth in a tight line, but his smile keeps peeking through. He fails completely when Lance laughs, high and sweet like an aria, and Keith laughs along with him.

He’ll miss this. Not the fights or the tired, miserable nights, but he’ll miss the aftermath, the three steps forward they take every time they push through all the white noise and say what they mean.

When the laughter subsides, Keith leans a little further into Lance. “I’ll miss you.”

“Too bad, I’m not going anywhere.” Lance’s soft smile is making Keith’s head feel fuzzy. Is it possible to get drunk off a smile? It must be - what else could cause the overwhelming desire to reach out his hand and trace the edges of that smile with his fingertips? But the smile is gone again when Lance continues, “But...I think that’s why I reacted so badly, yesterday. When I said I wouldn’t care if you go, it’s obviously not true. I’m going to miss you, too...a lot...a lot, a lot…”

Keith surges forward.

The angle’s all wrong and he catches Lance mid-ramble, so his lips catch the corner of his open mouth. When he tries to tilt his head, their noses bump together. Keith opens his eyes, facing flaring up with embarrassment, and Lance gazes back at him, not looking surprised or confused but alight with happiness. “Only you, mullet.”

Lance brings his hand up to cup Keith’s cheek, his other hand tangling in his hair, pulling Keith forward. It’s infinitely better this time, noses only brushing and lips locking together perfectly. Keith’s hands, before stiff at his side, come up to grip the lapels of Lance’s suit, an effort to get him even closer. Better, so much better, but it still could have been the worst kiss of Keith’s life and he’d just be happy to be kissing Lance McClain.

Lance pulls away first, eyes fluttering open, thumb running softly over Keith’s cheekbone. He lets out a shaky breath that ghosts Keith’s lips and all Keith wants to do is kiss him again. So he does. He can taste Lance’s smile.

He pulls away again, eyes shining. “I’ve wanted this for a really long time.”

Keith’s breath catches, but he manages to stutter out, “How...how long?”

Lance’s cheeks go pink. “I may have tried to hit on you at the bar after my first ever dress…”

“That was you hitting on me?” Keith asks, unimpressed.

Lance balks. “It’s not my fault you were so unreceptive to my best moves.”

“Those were your best -”

Lance cuts him off with his lips. Neither of them talk for awhile after that.

Commotion in the halls outside finally leads them to separate, both panting and hair mused. Dress must be over, which means they missed the good night and Shiro will be looking for them. There’s a world outside of Lance’s office waiting, a set of routines and motions they’re used to following, but Keith wants no part in it for a little while longer.

His whole reality has shifted off its axis this week, for better and for worse, and he’s earned the right to enjoy the better for a few more uninterrupted moments.

Lance seems less fazed by the parameters of his reality shifting. He stands up and shucks of his jacket - in the whirlwind of fighting and confessing and kissing they forgot to return their costumes to wardrobe. He begins unbuttoning his now wrinkled dress shirt and it takes Keith a distracted second to register he’s also speaking.

“Off to the bars? I bet Hunk’s already there. I can text him, get him to buy us some drinks…”

Keith stands too, interrupting Lance’s plan making. “I think I’m just going home.” Ticks after he says it, Keith’s body remembers it’s exhausted, running on the fumes of fitful sleep and bad coffee. But he doesn’t want to leave Lance yet.

On that, he and Lance seem to agree as he watches Lance’s excited face fall. “Oh...okay...cool.”

Keith needs to see Lance excited again, so he holds out his hand, palm up, silently asking Lance to take it. And when silently doesn’t work, Keith starts, “You could…” before trailing off, face hot.

He sees the moment it clicks for Lance, what Keith’s asking him. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips, but there’s also a mischievous glint in his eyes. He starts whistling as he throws his t-shirt over his head and goes searching for his jeans, stealing looks at Keith with cocky smirk. When Keith glares at him, Lance adopts an innocent little half-smile. “What? I’m just getting ready to go to the bar. Unless…”

Keith groans. “Don’t make me say it.”

Lance grins and Keith realizes he’s enamoured with the devil himself. “No, I definitely need you to say it.”

“Lance!”

Lance’s first response to that is taking his pants off. He tosses them to the side, a crumpled heap that will cost him his head tomorrow with wardrobe. While stepping into his jeans, Lance starts in on a lecture, “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. I do not just jump into the bed of any caller who offers me their gloved hand -”

“Come home with me, Lance.”

Lance, one leg in and one leg out of his pants, trips in surprise and tumbles on to the floor. Keith watches with tears of laughter in his eyes as Lance tries to recover, finishing getting dressed and grabbing his jacket. His face remains red even as his hand slides into Keith’s, interlocking their fingers. Keith’s face goes a little red, too.

“Thought you’d never ask.”

They walk out of the office hand in hand. Keith’s still in his Report suit and wardrobe will be having his head tomorrow, too, because it will definitely end up in a crumpled mess on his bedroom floor.

 

...

 

_friday - season 14_

The wings of the _Sketch Space_ soundstage may be Keith’s favorite place in the world. He loves the organized chaos, watching makeup artists add last minute touches to a colorful prosthetic or narrowly avoiding a cast member practicing a pratfall or spotting Alfor with a glass of Nunvill laughing with Shiro while checking over the set.

He’s already out of costume, his sketches finished for the night, his hair free of a wig cap and his favored red jacket snug around his shoulders. But the energy of the night still courses through his body, tingling in the tips of his toes. The after party awaits once the credits stop rolling and the bows end. One more sketch stands between him and many glasses of something a lot better than Nunvill.

The cameraman cues in three cast members on set. It’s a school-based sketch and it may have something to do with zero-gravity. Keith can spot the rigs hooked up to two of them. He vaguely recalls the new guy - Hunk? - wrote this. The audience likes it well enough for a graveyard sketch, awake enough to laugh along.

He’s interested in seeing how Hunk and the other new cast member - Pidge - do and he tries to stay focused on the stage, but Keith’s attention keeps getting torn between the sketch and signalling nonsense to Shiro and half-listening to Axca and Rolo’s conversation behind They’re seemingly planning a late night joyride to a resort planet instead of sticking around at one of the bars in the Station. Keith has no desire to spend his pre-Sunday on a resort planet, but he’d hate to miss a joyride off-station. He’s about to turn around when he hears their conversation stalling.

“And that’s why you can’t...ya can’t…” Someone’s struggling to read the cue card onstage and painfully so. “Uh-”

Rolo whistles lowly, “Tough luck to that kid.”

“Someone put him out of his misery,” Axca says with a groan.

The sketch comes to a crippling close thanks to the flub. The flood of stage lights makes it near impossible to see the audience, but Keith imagines they’re cringing in second-hand embarrassment. They clap anyway, no doubt directed to. Keith tries to catch a glimpse of the line flubber, but the wings erupt in post-sketch pandemonium, PAs dashing to fly out the set and floor managers pushing the cast and host into places for the good night.

All Keith sees is a flash of tan skin and sad blue eyes, tucked under the arm of Hunk.

He takes his traditional spot for the good night, so far in the back you’d have to squint to see him on the biggest television set. Shiro’s barred him from leaving the stage before the host’s finished thanking the musical guest and the crew, but Keith’s off the second they’re done. He swears he spies Shiro rolling his eyes from his spot closer to the front, but that irritation is nothing buying him a drink can’t fix.

He’s at the afterparty before anyone else, nursing a vodka soda and swatting away production assistants too new to know he’ll never be interested, friendship or otherwise.

It’s not long before the bar starts filling up and he’s on a second drink. He watches Allura and Shiro snag seats on the left end of the bar and moves to join them, only for another pesky new crew member to swoop in beside him.

“Pretty good dress tonight, huh?”

The guy looks close to his age, though it’s hard to tell under the flashing oranges and blues. He’s smiling down at Keith, eager and disarming. If Keith had a third drink in hand, he’d consider sticking around and finishing it with him. But it was a long week and a longer dress - too many quick costume changes and one scratchy wig after another - and Keith wants to waste the night away with people he knows, not a blue-eyed stranger that’ll be moving on by next season.

“Yeah sure,” Keith replies with no inflection. It’s his best tactic, utter disinterest. Allura often says it’s unnerving how aloof Keith can be during a first meeting.

“I really liked that invisible electric maze sketch.”

Keith almost smiles into his glass. Coran and Allura had been bouncing around the idea for months and all the tech at last came together this week. “Yeah.”

The eagar smile flattens out. “Most people usually thank someone when they give them a compliment.”

“It’s not like I wrote it,” Keith states.

“Well, yeah...but you were in it.”

“Okay, thanks.” Keith hopes that’ll be the end of it. The guy blinks at him, smile long gone, but he makes no move to go. Keith squints back at him, trying to place his face amongst the sea of people in the wings tonight. He comes up with nothing. “Sorry, who are you again?”

The guy makes a disbelieving sound. “Uh, the name’s Lance.” He says it like the name should set off alarm bells in Keith’s head.

Keith tilts his head. “Are you a new PA?”

Lance squeaks, high-pitched and directly in Keith’s ear. “No! I’m a new cast member! We just did our first dress together.”

“Your first dress.”

One of Lance’s hands is curled into a tight fist on the bar, inches from Keith’s drink. His eyes - are they blue? - hold blatant fury. “I meant -”

The eyes are blue and it hits Keith then. “Wait, were you the guy that flubbed your one line?”

“It was a tongue twister! A tongue twister!” Lance yells, carrying over the noise of the entire bar. He catches Shiro eyeing them and Keith desperately wants to mouth save me, but Lance’s big head and bruised ego block him. “Whatever, mullet, all your sketches fell flat tonight and that’s far more embarrassing.”

At that, Keith rolls his eyes. He downs the final sip of his drink, the burn painless compared this guy’s presence. Keith gives him one last once over before shifting off his seat. “Welcome to the cast. Have fun featuring.”

As he walks away, he hears Lance mutter, “Asshole.”

And though Lance won’t hear him, Keith growls back, “Dick.”

He elbows his way to the end of the bar, to Shiro and Allura, wedging himself between them and the wall. Shiro leans over, face a little sweaty and pink, and yells, “I saw you talking to Lance.”

“He’s the fucking worst,” Keith yells back as he signals the bartender for another drink. The sixth arm slides a double to him within seconds.

Allura giggles beside him. “He is a bit...dramatic, isn’t he?”

“That’s a word for it.”

“Give him a chance, it was his first night.”

Keith gives Shiro a blank stare over the rim of his glass. He takes a long sip before answering, “That idiot will be lucky if he lasts to the end of the season.”

“Oh, don’t be so sure.” Coran pops up over Keith’s shoulder, causing Keith to start. His drink splashes over his glass and onto the counter. The bartender’s eight arm has the mess cleaned up before Coran cares to elaborate.

“I believe that boy might surprise us.”

They all turn to look at Lance, rooted to the same spot Keith left him, now flirting shamelessly with Nyma. His arms are everywhere, leaning on the bar, gesturing in the air, exploding over his head. His face moves through ten expressions in a minute, from happy to impressed to smug to what he must consider slick. He’s so animated, it gives Keith a headache to look at him for too long, like spending too much time in front of a TV set absorbing an oversaturated cartoon.

If this is how he presents himself in public, Keith cannot begin to imagine what happens when he gets in front of a camera, and for more than one tongue twisting line.

He’s suddenly a little curious to find out.

“Yes, he’ll surprise us. Especially you, Keith.”

 

...

 

_saturday_

“Sixty seconds to Report!”

An assistant make-up artist tries in vain to finish setting his face, as if the lighting does not already make him look ghostly pale on camera. A production intern finishes adding prop pages to the Report desk, pages they never glance at. Off somewhere in the wings, Coran practices an over-the-top version of his own accent, twirls his blackened mustache. The camera person waits on a cue. The audience is one united blob of humming excitement.

“Forty-five seconds to Report!”

Everything about this last week, about last night, should have left Keith drained, little left to give. But his whole body thrums with excitement, the Saturday night adrenaline arriving perfectly on schedule. It’ll never fail him, not until he decides it’s time to part ways.

“Thirty seconds to Report, opening credits standby!”

His make-up artist gives up while Lance’s insists his under eyes do not look puffy. Keith snorts, drawing Lance’s attention his way.

“Hey Keith, wanna tell Lana here why I’m looking a little less rested than usual?”

“The nerves still really get to him,” Keith deadpans, but a blush rises to his cheeks, caked under the make-up. Lana glances back and forth between them, but makes the wise decision not to get involved. She hits Lance’s nose with the powder brush one last night before briskly walking off the set.

“Fifteen seconds to Report, opening credits ready!”

Lance keeps coughing and Keith keeps laughing, even as Keith is sure they can both see Shiro eyeing them disapprovingly from behind the camera.

When the coughing subsides, Lance peers over at Keith, tilting his head, studying Keith with an intensity that has Keith growing even hotter under the stage lights.

“Ten seconds -”

“What?” Keith asks with a mix of false and sincere exasperation.

A smile blooms on Lance’s face and for a second, Keith thinks it must be born out of excitement for the start of another Report.

But the smile is not directed out at the cheering fans. It’s as wide as a valley and as gleaming as a star, the kind any audience could fall in love with, but it’s also soft and effortlessly fond and directed only at Keith.

“Open credits, go! Fifteen seconds to Keith and Lance!”

“What?” Keith asks, any trace of exasperation gone, when Lance does not look forward when the Report opening begins.

“I was just thinking…” Lance’s hand twitches on the desk, like he wants to reach out for something, for Keith. “They did a great job covering that hickey on your neck.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

The red light blinking on the camera, the sign of going live, saves Lance’s life.

“And cue Lance!”

Lance swings forward, giving the camera his full and undivided attention, though Keith can see the signs of unsung laughter tearing at the corners of his bright blue eyes. “Good evening, ladies and aliens. I’m Lance McClain.”

“And I’m Keith Kogane, this is your weekly Raucous Report.”

They play through their routine, wink and nudge each other as the laughter rolls, go a little too off-script until a warning look from Shiro reels them back in. Keith gets to breathe when Coran rockets onto the stage as their first correspondent, rallying back and forth with Lance with the encouragement of the studio audience.

Keith leans back a little in his chair, watches as if he’s up in the stands with them, taking in the show without being a part of it. He laughs a little too hard when Coran tries to dump a glass of water of Lance’s head to show him how the Italian ambassador felt to go overboard.

The show will be okay whenever he decides to go. And he’ll be okay without it.

“The Altean royal advisor everyone!”

The camera will be back on Keith once Coran swivels off the stage. He’s still finishing dabbing the spit of Lance’s face from where he spewed water at him. It’s what the idiot deserves, Keith thinks a little vindictively, but, like Lance, effortlessly fond.

He’ll be okay to go.

But he has plenty of shows to do in the meantime.

 

...

 

_sunday - season 20_

Lance is a Sunday morning demon.

He wakes up at the crack of dawn, despite not crashing into bed until three in the morning, still high on adrenaline. He sings off key in the shower and continues humming on his way to the kitchen. He has a tradition of making fluffy buttermilk pancakes - Hunk’s trusty recipe - but he can never seem to complete them without dropping four pans and burning himself twice and swearing because he’s close to setting off the fire alarm.

The apartment’s small so the sounds carry easily back to the bedroom. Keith keeps meaning to invest in a strong pair of earplugs, but he hasn’t been able to commit yet. He can bear the sunny pop songs and kitchen clanging a little longer. It’s always nice to switch up a routine.

Lance skydives back into the bed at 10:34.

His long limbs wrap around Keith, entrapping him. “Pancakes on the stove,” he whispers against his neck.

Keith hums in acknowledgement, but buries himself deeper in the pillows and Lance’s arms, eyes never opening. After a few seconds of peace, Lance pokes him in the cheek. “Babe, come on. Breakfast.”

“Too much energy,” Keith mumbles into the pillow, trying to shield himself now that Lance has decided to start poking at any inch of face he can reach.

“Ah, to be a big up and coming action movie star, getting to sleep until noon!” Lance flops on his back, arms and legs starfishing out, his right hand smacking Keith in the cheek. Keith grabs at the hand to push it away, but that only ends with their fingers entangled, resting on Keith’s shoulder.

“You could sleep in, too. It’s your day off.”

“Speaking of, isn’t your space con thing today?”

Keith’s eyes shoot open. “Shit.” He sits up, his sore limbs screaming, and he quietly longs for this time last year, when the only thing on his mind was making coffee in his french press.

“Ah, to be a movie star,” Lance repeats, saddling up next to Keith and hooking his chin over his shoulder. Now Keith is really wishing for his old day off, the idea of sitting around the apartment all day with Lance to keep in company so much more appealing than a crowded convention center giving ten different interviews to promote a film that is not even finished yet.

But when it comes down to it, he just want to stick with Lance, whether in the warmth of their apartment or the sticky heat of a ballroom. “You could come with me, you know. If...If you want.”

Lance’s eyes sparkle and he takes Keith’s hand again, smoothing his thumb over the bruised knuckles, an on-set casualty. He shakes his head, “Nah, I gotta watch the news. Wouldn’t want to leave the Pidgeon hanging.”

“Next time?” Keith asks, weaving their fingers together and squeezing tight.

“Next time” Lance punctuates it with a lingering kiss on Keith’s cheek. “And that gives me time to put together the best costume.” Lance hums like he’s turning over a thought in his mind and then his eyes widen. “If the next one’s after Mamora comes out, I can go as you!”

“No.”

“And I’ll look so good in the costume, they’ll have no choice. They’ll have to ask me to take over the role!”

Keith swats at Lance’s head, only for Lance to tackle him, close to crushing Keith back onto the bed. He squirms to get away, but gives up the fight when Lance starts peppering kisses along his jaw. “Then you’ll know what it’s like kissing the hottest writer-action star in space,” Lance whispers right below his ear.

It’s not the Sunday morning routine Keith savored a year ago.

And five years from now, he may not want to be an action star anymore and Lance may have moved on from Sketch Space, too. They’ll keep moving on to bigger and brighter things, chase after farther away stars.

That’s fine with Keith, so long as he gets to have Sunday mornings with Lance for as close to forever as they can get.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) This fic owes a lot to Seth Meyers interviews with various cast members of Saturday Night Live, even more to the excellent Vulture article on the inception and making of the David Pumpkins sketch, and the most to Aaron Sorkin’s one hit wonder Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (it’s so flawed but so watchable)
> 
> 2) I’d also like to thank Chevy Chase of all people - his dumbass comments about Saturday Night Live not being funny anymore acted as a springboard for this fic.
> 
> 3) As you no doubt gathered, this fic takes place in a weird universe where Earth regularly interacts with many other planets and apparently there are universal television networks. How that happened and how that would even work is far beyond my imagination, so please indulge my ambiguity.
> 
> 4) What happened during Season 16? Nothing? Or everything?
> 
> 5) Finally, thank you for reading! To quote a million fic writers in a million places: this really got away from me. I so appreciate all of you who made it to the end!


End file.
